Laziness on the curriculum

I am currently preparing for some corporate training and NLP programmes, digging through books and just sitting thinking about the things to be covered, I have been reflecting on music, society, education and us.
Most of the time I go around in some form of robotic state and this trance state does my driving, teaching, eating and many other functions but what I have noticed is that state does not do song writing and guitar practice, if anything it stops me and that is something I need to change in my life.
The only reason I find for this is creativity is something that happens when I am totally relaxed and have nothing to do, in other words in my idleness zone.  So idleness is one of the things that I need to embrace and find for myself otherwise nothing will change for me.
The other state that I find useful and again one much maligned is the state of naivety, without it one would never do anything because the odds are so stacked against you why bother.
In the past naivety has helped me become a guitarist, helped me play gigs that I will think about as real achievements in my life and taken me to life experiences that shaped me; if I thought about those things first they would never have happened.
So let us include laziness into the school curriculum so that daydreaming will develop the creative trance and let us do it in a state of total naivety so that children and adults can believe anything and in that blissful state open the mind to the possibilities of new ideas set apart from the ideas of society that restrict.

Vic


www.bluescampuk.co.uk

It is no measure of health...

Reaching out as much as possible to friends and family, without feeling humiliated or the stigma that is carried with the label ‘depression’ and the negative phrases that go with it, mental illness, mental disease. Krishnamurti was right “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”

 

With every death of someone who is conspicuously talented like Robin Williams whose very brilliance is predicated in their state of mind we then have a period of soul searching about mental health.

It might be better to think of it as a disease because if we go back to the original meaning ‘ dis ease’ then that unease that people feel with their lives and society then the quote of Krishnamurti is validated.

 

The amount of pressure to succeed to be responsible and capable when in reality we all fail, are often irresponsible and incapable makes many feel uneasy with life for some they wear a face that works in public, they are funny, talented and crazy. When the mask slips someone like Robin Williams decides it is time to check out and we are shocked by the fact he wants to leave.

I would suggest that we take a long hard look at society and also how governments work and see that there are many areas that are profoundly sick and some of these things only occur to us when we step back and look from a detached place.

So from this place look at what music could do to create meaning in people’s lives when viewed as a creative self-development, in my experience I have taught a number of doctors who by their own admission have said that music has saved them from having ‘another nervous breakdown’

Vic

 

Foundations of Life.

We must go down to the very foundations of life, for merely superficial ordering of life that leaves its deepest needs unsatisfied is as ineffectual as if no attempt at order had ever been made. – I Ching
Ok a little deep but this week I am looking at levels of change which can happen with life events such as a divorce, loss of employment, ill health or death of someone close. Also deep levels of change can and do happen when you explore oneself through music and traditionally this was an excepted part of personal development.
One of the frustrating things for therapists who really want people to get better is that they find it difficult to create change in old habits and form new ones in their clients that would lead to the improvement and healing that they seek. It seems that even ways of living however destructive because they are familiar are better than the unknown however promising their adoption would be, therefore people carry on as normal.
The advantage with music is one can affect some sort of change without realising it especially adults whose whole development of musical skills might be wrapped up in letting go of negative programming built up over the years of educational brainwashing. Because it is not obvious what is going on by incorporating subtle changes of thinking whilst learning music, things that were believed before like the lack of musicality and creativity can be disproved and then lots of changes can happen.
If this was obvious to the ancient Chinese sages then it might be interesting to know how they affected change. We know that along with acupuncture, herbs and meditation, sound was part of the therapy.
Vic

I am preparing for a new term and this one is long and busy and a change is needed.

I am aware this year of a change due to the things that I have done, I am looking closely at what I am currently doing and that maybe I need to change that as well.
I have been troubled by the way education funnels the mind of children into smaller and smaller focus which may have been good for sending them to the office or the factory but in today’s society we need flexibility and creative thinking with the ability to learn new things and new skills and that is not being addressed by schools in my humble opinion.
I heard an interesting talk on the radio by science fantasy writer Jasper Fforde saying that schools need to promote imaginative thinking and not focus on science because what we need are new ideas not a reworking of old thoughts .He raised the interesting point that on a mobile phone the only new idea was the liquid crystal display everything else was reworking of old technology.
Old paradigms that drive political and economic thinking have taken us to a number of dangerous places which is evident in the non-ecological aspect of most government thinking. For example instead of creating more energy we should just use less, we are using three and a half times what this planet can sustain in the West and that cannot continue whatever we think, this is a bit like death, you might be able to delay it but it is coming for you.
What matters in our thinking should be what world are we leaving for our children? At this rate we are destroying our grandchildren because we are destroying the ecosystem that they require; don’t get me wrong here the planet does not need saving that will adjust but it will be without us. We are at the top of the food chain we are the most vulnerable and the change that we need comes from all of us not from politicians and we can start by changing how we teach our children.
Vic

Unknowable......

I am running a school where you are not obliged to know stuff or be an expert. It is more about being able to wonder and to learn a little, and that is all that a life needs. - Steven Jenkinson.


Ah if only this was the attitude that people had when they stared to learn music, finding themselves through exploring sound and playing and the joy of working with others understanding that mind reading is not as science would say nonsense but something that musicians do all of the time.
Art comes from the dreamlike world of the unconscious which does not require paper qualifications and recommendations of the halls of academe but the attention of the ordinary people that you have something to say or something to teach.
Music is the expression of life and its weirdness and its love and its pain, nothing to do with measurement or repeatable scientific research; that is for the people in white coats.
I have often pondered that if J K Rowling had written about a young scientist who had gone to a special school to fulfil his destiny whether she would have had such a success in her writing? I would say not.
So let us embrace the people that make us feel good whether they have qualifications or not and here is to sticking a finger or two up to the accountants who want to measure and the scientists who want to dissect everything and then wonder why it is dead.

Vic



Bluescampuk three days of rocking out. ... www.bluescampuk.co.uk

Getting uncomfortable

I spend a lot of time looking and attending courses and festivals to give me ideas for Bluescampuk and seeing if there are new ways of making the experience exciting.
I have just returned from something which was more ceremonial in the hills of Wales and this experience was interesting for me because I felt totally out of my depth. I was in a group that seemed to have done it before so that feeling of uncertainty and the feeling of ‘why am I here’ which I know many people experience when doing something new really hit me.
I have always felt that the feeling of uncertainty for me always precedes a learning moment I have even got the point as looking for this as the marker that confirms that something needs to be looked at.
I have reached the point in my life that things that are comfortable are not really transformational events and that feeling of fear and uncertainty is what I need marking it as being out of my comfort zone.
I know that a lot of people experience this feeling when doing music examinations and it may be a good way of explaining why a challenge like this is good for them.
Vic

 www.bluescampuk.co.uk

In the absence of willpower the most complete collection of virtues and talents is wholly worthless. -Aleister Crowley

A quote from one of the most famous or should I say infamous magicians of all time is so true of music as it is of magic or as Mr Crowley would have said magick.

Any art form from dance and poetry to music and sculpture is about expression of you the artist and one would use the tools of the trade – your talents and virtues as the building blocks to express this however without willpower you have no way of dealing with the blows that land on you from people who critique you and who are just downright jealous of you.

You need to develop a thick skin to deal with this and that is something that most artists do not have and it needs to be acquired.

A little bit like the skin on the ends of your fingers that start being very painful and then they toughen up and then one never feels that level of discomfort again.

 

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk

 

 

Right under your nose.

Sometimes we look for something and it is hiding in plain sight, right under our noses but because we do not expect the answer to be that easy we miss it.
Many of the answers in my own life I have found to be like this, something that I ‘stepped over’ in the course of every day and it often took something to change my paradigm to make me notice.
I was thinking about this with regard to music, some musicians get this instinctively and they know that the answers to their musical questions are already with them, they just need to ‘see’ them. Maybe the use of different ways of thinking through use of drugs or just dropping out help them to find what is right there.
I have explored the way that music changes consciousness and the way that consciousness changes music and some of the answers are so simple that you are amazed that they were staring you in the face all of the time.
This situation does not just apply to music, for an example I worked for a while in a bank as a cashier and balancing a till often led to a till difference where the figures did not tally. Once you had looked a few times then you would not see your mistake but someone else could spot it straight away. It was almost that you were hypnotised to what you could not see because you did not see it before.
So look with new eyes into things as if you did not know yourself…………..

Vic


www.bluescampuk.co.uk


Let us show you how to rock............

There are things known and things unknown and in between are the doors. Jim Morrison

The silence in between the place of naturalness these are powerful places; the between yes and no what Edward De Bono calls Po.
The Taoists call it ‘suspending your disbelief’ this is a creative place that things start from almost a trinity of the Father, Son and the Holy Ghost or Sun, Moon and Earth or Above Below and Middle Earth all of these trinities are hinting at the same thing.
The Doors were one of the most creative bands of the period and they were greatly influenced by one of the great British writers Aldous Huxley taking their name from his work the Doors of Perception.
Morrison certainly put himself ‘in between’ but we can do this just by thinking ‘outside’ even dreaming something different will do it.
Try this today let go of what you think is possible and what you think impossible and make it plausible and then act towards it.
Vic


www.bluescampuk.co.uk

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever. – Ghandi

What a great motto for those who teach from one of the great people of the 20^th century.

Learning is such an important thing that is why it is not done in schools. Learning which is free and unfettered is the thing that brings down governments and creates freedom for ordinary people that is why Ghandi was shot.

I am not suggesting that we bring down the government but I am suggesting that the type of learning that people can do through learning an instrument is very different than the type of learning that happens in schools and this is the opening for you as a musician.

Also good learning is fun and effortless it is what the human mind does best, but when you are being forced to acquire information that is what is difficult because there is no joy in it.

Vic

  www.bluescampuk.co.uk

 

Examination Reportage

It is always good fun jamming with people and every now and again I get chance to play with people that as a boy I listened to and admired.
Yesterday I was jamming with Chas Hodges and was able to sit and interview him for the Bluescampuk website. Chas has been down to us for the last three years and every year is an event because he brings something special to the time that he is there.
What I like about Chaz is his ability to just get stuck in and play and that is so refreshing, no pretence just play and have some fun which is something I cannot say about some of the things that I have to do for music and music teaching!
After a day of enjoyable playing I come back to check my emails to see that I have to correct a number of reports that I wrote for the last batch of examinations, however within the errors were some that included words deemed to be subjective like ‘good’ where I needed to use the words ‘secure’ or ‘effective’ I am not sure about this but where I have written ‘good’ it was because I was fed up with ‘secure’ and I think those things are also subjective because it is still my opinion.
I have done less and less examining over the years and when I do some I then realise why I generally do not bother agreeing to do them in the first place. In my mind candidates are only taking guitar exams as a target for their practise nothing more; really for a musician it is about going out and playing because walking out on stage saying ‘hey look at how clever I am’ and waving a certificate, whether that is for grade one or for a licentiate diploma will illicit the response once shouted at Frank Zappa of ‘shut up and play your guitar’.
Chaz does not have a single certificate for his playing but he does have an allotment.

Vic

 check out Bluescampuk for next year


www.bluescampuk.co.uk

This week I am preparing for Bluescampuk which is now in its seventh year.

We have learnt much over that time and each year brings new challenges and thoughts about how we can improve and adapt.

Due to returners we have to rethink the structure so that the ones who have been before do not know what is coming next as stepping outside the comfort zone is what we need to truly learn.

Over the year I have spent time listening to players that you could call ‘world musicians’ I have trained with dancers, spoken and listened to philosophers, scientists, peace campaigners and ecologists all in an attempt to view life (and to me that is music through a different lens of experience) in a different way.

I have often found great ideas from spinning someone’s way of thinking into my own musical thinking by using various lateral thinking tools. For instance using the concept of opposites that I picked up from Tai Chi I have explored the jazz concept of playing ‘outside’ from the NLP I have created speed learning techniques for scales, licks etc. and from ecology the idea of reusing and recycling for songwriting.

Everything that we do comes through the mind and body therefore the way we think and ‘are’ permeates everything that we do, therefore it underlies ways of thinking and acting in every discipline so something that you do in mathematics can be expressed in music and something that you do in music can be expressed in politics.

I was drawn to this by a quote attributed to the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu that the way to govern people is the same as cooking a small fish, lightly. I thought that this humorous but deeply profound statement which is as true today but equally as unobserved in this surveillance micromanaged age had at its heart cookery as the philosopher’s touchstone.

So if you want to come and join the fun there are two places left but it is next weekend…………

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk

 

 

 

The Elephant of Death

I have been interested in the work of Stephan Jenkinson about death and dying; the process is something that this society has tried to sanitise and professionalise to the detriment of ourselves.

His point of view is that it leads to serious problems for society and us as individuals because it is the elephant in the room that will eventually sit on you.

When it does everyone will be surprised, especially you but that is what this particular elephant does and it will not be unfair when it does.

What I find personally interesting is the state of mind that develops when you embrace your mortality, it does paradoxically give your life value and beauty because it will end.

The Homeric statement that the gods envy us because we are mortal just like a beautiful flower that is more beautiful because it will not last comes to mind. The ancient stories and some modern stories deal with the idea of death whether to face of it or the becoming of it as the important aspect of the story. Death acting as a catalyst or doorway is integral in the ancient initiations of the Greeks, Egyptians and the Romans.

This post is not meant to be morbid on the contrary it is life affirming it is a wakeup call to get to it and live.

I believe that musicians who feel their mortality are much greater for it, remember that Hendrix foretold his own death as did John Lennon; we do not need to be able to do that we just need to make friends with the elephant.

 

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk

 

 

 

I like to think that the moon is there even if I am not looking at it. – Albert Einstein

I would like to paraphrase this quote by saying  ‘I like to think that the music is there even though I am not listening for it’.
Sometimes when I am playing the guitar I get the feeling that the most incredible ideas are there just out of reach and occasionally like some celestial butterfly it lands on me. The more I try to catch this butterfly the more it eludes me.
Over the years I have reflected on the Taoist idea of going with the flow, the idea that if one is soft therein lies the strength, if one just follows the wave you can ride the surf and the surfing analogy of the wave is good here; there is no surfing without catching the wave, you do not make the wave by trying hard.
Einstein’s idea that our consciousness effects ‘reality’ may hold something that the sages and mystics of the past have stated about the nature of reality, and that I feel gives us a doorway to these musical ideas that are floating about in the ether.
I have found it more effective to put myself into a space where the ideas move freely without my conscious ‘trying’ but more my ‘dreaming’ and that seems to take me somewhere very different, like sitting under a bush of flowers covered in butterflies whilst wearing a floral shirt. Suddenly the butterfly ideas seem to want to land.
So whether you want to ideas to just exist or whether you want them to flow though you then you have to hold them in your awareness. So one extra thought here, what about the fearful, negative thoughts that we hold so firmly, what are they doing to us?

Vic


www.bluescampuk.co.uk

“A man’s errors are his portals of discovery."James Joyce

Break the patterns and play outside of the key, listen to the new ideas and see what happens.
You will not do anything new without breaking the patterns of behaviour; you need to break a few eggs to make an omelette.
Because of the system we are now turning out clones of the Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Slash, Hendrix and other icons instead of breaking them and making new ones; how do you find your uniqueness? Through your mistakes errors and inadequacies, Django was not great in spite of his loss of fingers but because of them. Hendrix was great because he could not read music and therefore developed an awesome musical ear and like last week’s blog the reason why we have so many great players from the 60’s is because we were poor!
So get out there and mess things up and make something new, so instead of ‘one dire erection’ start ‘a new direction’
Vic

Change coming from adversity

It is said that every time a friend reported enthusiastically, 'I have just been promoted' Jung would say, 'I am very sorry to hear that: but if we all stick together we will get through it'. If a friend arrived depressed saying 'I have just been fired. ‘Jung would say, 'Let's open a bottle of wine, this is wonderful news, something good will happen now.' - Robert Bly 'Iron John'

 

Apart from this being classic reframing it actually goes much deeper into the myths of change coming from adversity. What do we learn from things going well? I would say very little if anything, life keeps plodding down a rutted road into a ditch, then wham! Something comes and lays waste to your dream and you wake up.

The ability to look and learn from the event is what makes us adapt. It is the moment in the music when something goes into the unplanned that real musical and spiritual brilliance happens; true improvisation.

As a society we are heading, I would say sleep walking into such a place. We have been told the problems are someone else's, it is the immigration, it is the fuel crisis, it is the global warming, it is Islamists etc. BUT have we changed our habits and life styles or are we thinking that we are right are we just playing the same tune over and over again?

We consume three times what we should in the West and that is the real problem, if a political party said this it would make them unelectable so they carry on saying we need to grow and consume more, like eating more is a way to deal with obesity.

Fracking is their answer to energy problems but this will lead to a catastrophe both economically and ecologically because they are both linked. Economists have in the Cartesian view separated ecology and economy as if there is no way that environment has anything to do with making money but what worth is the money when you have poisoned the water table and the air is spoiled and global warming is making the environment unsuitable for us to live.

Time for a new tune based on listening to the other players on the stage and maybe the answer is when opportunity comes dressed as the devil; frightening, shocking but unstoppable.

 

 

Vic

 

www.bluescampuk.co.uk

 

 

 

Poverty and Music

“Do not waste your time on social questions. What is the matter with the poor is poverty; what is the matter with the rich is uselessness.”
Shaw

One of my drivers when I was younger was lack of money. It made me creative and focused and although I did not know this at the time because that was life I can see now that the people who have it all do not have the passion and the commitment to take the knocks. Also they may not have anything to say, a little like a Phil Collins song about how difficult it is making ends meet.
The idea that riches cause a problem is something that you need to consider not necessarily for you because you probably would not be aiming to be a jobbing musician if you had the cash already; but for the people that you might meet in your work either as clients or punters. There are many people out there who have more than enough money for all of us put together.
Finding a keenness that drives people to practise and sweat over their art is rather difficult and if they cannot find out, because it took me a while and I was looking, then some help may be required.

With lots of money that ‘drive’ diminishes and I see that in pupils they are not hungry enough, if they were they would be blinding players, it is a shame but looking at the poor then they have something to be angry and passionate.

Vic

The change in education is coming through the internet and it could mean the end of school education as we know it.

With the growth of online education sites such as Khan Academy and many university courses which come under the banner of MOOC’s (Massive Open Online Courses) the nature of education is changing where some schools in the USA are using these as the curriculum and the teachers are fewer in number but use the backup from the internet to check and assess the work of the pupils.
If you think this is a problem for individual teachers imagine what this could mean for the institutions of teaching such as the independent schools and universities.
The answer is to be aware of this and use the technology to your advantage, because no one knows where this is going. Use this as an opportunity you will be better off than just sitting back as if nothing is happening which is exactly what I see in the schools as I travel around.

Vic



www.bluescampuk.co.uk

Profits anyone?

The authorities occasionally try to crack down on our right to party. Sex and drugs and rock and roll frighten our leaders. These attempts tellingly stopped when they realised that the club culture was turning into a giant industry which attracted profits for the exchequer. Tom Hodgkinson  

Money makes the world go round into a hole in the ground, follow the paper trail of the money makers and you can see why bankers, CEO’s, lawyers and the like get well paid while nurses, teachers are badly paid. Anything that makes money gets money and anything that does not gets naught.

Musicians fall into this trap and it is worsened by the artist poverty mind-set which says I am not worth much, I do this for fun. Just because you enjoy doing something does not mean that you should not be paid for it but you have to learn how to create value in the minds of those paying for it.

A couple weeks ago I had a pupil complain about the price of the exam fee for grade 6 and I took him to task over it especially as he may become a professional musician in the future. It was a classic case of a young person opening his mouth and the attitudes of his parents coming out.

The attitude of the government of any country is by its very nature protective, of themselves that is as they are the ruling classes; change would mean that they might not stay as they ones in charge. But as the above quote says there is a trade off when it comes to the money, remember the role of the artist is to challenge and present ideas for something different.

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk

 

 

 

Your mind is full of weeds they too can enrich your path to enlightenment. Shunryu Suzuki

The idea of the problem, the error, the weakness being the very thing that can define your way that can inspire you I find comforting. In an age where we are constantly being told that perfection is the only way I like the idea of the weeds of your personality, consciousness can enrich you and take you forward.

When someone asked Johnny Cash how they got the train like rhythms in their songs he said, ‘That is all we can do’. That might be all that we need, the idea that lack or a technical problem in your playing might be the way forward; I am sure that Django would like to have had four fingers but it defined the player and maybe defined the man.

 

Vic

 

 

 www.bluescampuk.co.uk

The road to excess leads to a palace of wisdom - William Blake

Blake was one of this land’s great visionaries and revolutionaries, his mystical paintings and poetry and his above quote is full of ambiguity and intrigue.

The artist often is blamed for excess and profanity either because of life style and life choices of excess in drugs, drink and a life of anarchistic expression. Even the amount one has to practice to become skilled at an instrument is excessive and beyond the capability of ‘ordinary folk’.

A number of years ago my life lead me into an interest in Ayurveda which is the traditional health and wellbeing system of India and in one of the ideas of keeping healthy is based on food and balancing what you eat matched to your body energy. However one thing that was said that every now and again you should shake your body up by not following the routine and doing something VERY different break the rules and then go back and into balance again.  

In times of shaking up that is where we discover ourselves; we learn to be brave, we learn to see the things we missed, and we learn to draw from the deep wells of ourselves.

Where else would our music come from?

 

Vic

 

 www.bluescampuk.co.uk

 

 

 

People who are too busy.

Most of the world's troubles seem to come from people who are too busy. If only politicians and scientists were lazier how much happier we would be. - Evelyn Waugh


Politicians have to prove why they are needed by changing things like the education syllabus and the NHS. These changes cost millions and for no real benefit because if they worked they would only make one change but this is not the case it is a constant happening.
The belief in religion is now the belief in science and to question it is a modern heresy but nothing in the philosophy and thinking of man has taken us to the edge of destruction in the way that science has.
The philosophy of economic growth needs to change; perhaps we need other markers like happiness and wellbeing. Here is the point that all artists know, happiness comes from expressing what is within not by acquiring stuff. Unfortunately that does not fit well on a balance sheet or a flow chart and as the society is ruled by the markers of the accountant we carry on in the same old way with the politicians being busy changing things and the scientists finding new ways of making us busy often paid by big business because at the end of the day he who pays the piper calls the tune.
All truths start as a blasphemy.

Vic

Business training from music

Music is the perfect way of exploring team building and creative ideas that are either contained within parameters such as in blues or not, as in jazz or simplistic as in pop music or complex as in classical music.

 

For ideas to flourish in business we need to be able to explore these areas to innovate but also to be able to see how structure can be applied to the ideas as we do in musical genres for them to be contained and be functional. Also music projects emotional values and this is an aspect that business has toyed with but often failed to accomplish such as ‘the caring bank....’

 

Great music has emotional resonance and it lasts for decades speaking to different generations because it is still relevant emotionally. Music is inherent because it is language and therefore it is a metaphor for many things such as creative thinking, generating ideas and team work.

Putting a band together is an exercise in social engineering and much can be learnt by the business world from the world of music in how to blend egos and creative temperaments.

 

 

Vic

 

I have to entertain the children

This is a quote from a mother about her own children; I have to entertain the children. It made me reflect on my parents and the idea that they had to entertain me was ridiculous, they expected me to entertain myself which I did and that became a lifelong skill and I can honestly say that I have never had a day in my life where I was bored. A skill was imparted by my parents by them not doing any entertaining!

The laid back Taoists of ancient China had a philosophy of letting the world turn and then all one does is ride the wave, if you need to, and if you don’t need to you just watch the wave!

I have made a career out of the opening quote and for that I am grateful but I believe it reflects a strange aspect in society that we have to be doing something and it is going to get a lot worse because the next generation of children will be parented by the children who need entertaining, where the hell are we going? What about people learning to be their own bosses following their own intuition?

Society has made everyone believe that they know nothing; a mass of people who need guidance. We are in a very strange place and that will develop very clearly that we are becoming mindless sheep. Maybe a glimmer of hope is that people are getting more connected and therefore there is a rise of a counterculture that might present an answer.

With music we have the chance to make something happen like in the days of Punk or the days of Skiffle where you did it for yourself there were no experts you just made it up as you went along rather like improvising. The test for improvising is simple, does it sound good?

So entertain yourself and listen to yourself and ask does it sound good and do I feel good? Oh and let the children play...

Vic



.www.bluescampuk.co.uk

 

The point about life is about living not working; we did not have children to make money for the ruling classes.

The reality is that many of us do have children for the above reason, ok not intentionally but if we consider the check list mentality that goes on in our culture where the young are literally going through their version of the bucket-list of life. The car, the house, the children, the holidays, the pets, the new job, we are doing this because it is the checklist given to us by the media passed through what our friends are doing; the living in London, the moving out of London etc.
As I get older the only thing that becomes clear to me is I realise how much I really do not know. When I was younger I knew it all and as each year went by the less I knew until now I am completely stupid BUT I have also in that time have become to realise that no one else knows anything either and all the points put across are flawed including the advice given to us by the experts
I my life time butter has been bad and now it is good, margarine was good and now it is bad, wine was good, bad, good and now bad, tea and coffee likewise fluctuate. So with that experience I ask myself who is paying for the research and who is getting the money for our fears?
In the past music and health treatments were free and you could heal yourself by eating the herbs that were outside your door.  Now we are told this is rubbish and we are encouraged to take drugs that cost lots of money only to discover later that A, they do not work. B they are more dangerous to either us or the environment than the good they do or C they are making someone who happens to be part of the ruling elite either here or in Washington lots of money, or all three of the above.
I suggest that we do what the troubadours did in times past become the channels of information through our music and bring our music to the people in such a way that avoids the big companies, that establishes the small i.e. you and your friends, and all things that you do you do for yourself and those around you disregarding the tick box culture propagated by the media
Be true to yourself, you are your best judge.

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk

The Gospel according to Kellogg

The physical act of crunching cornflakes or other cereals is portrayed as working an amazing alchemy on slothful human beings; the incoherent, unshaven sluggard is magically transformed into a smart and jolly worker full of vigour and purpose by the positive power of cereal. Kellogg himself, tellingly, was a puritanical health nut who never had sex (he preferred enemas). Such are the architects of our daily life. – Tom Hodgkinson

 

When we look at how something is presented through the media it often takes years before you really see what is going on and then after that epiphany everything starts to look stupid.

The book written by Tom Hodgkinson that this quote is taken from, How To Be Idle, is a great read with some lovely insights like this about the madness of the modern world and its fixation on cereals and health when the evidence is to the contrary. Yet as people are making lots of money from a product that has more nutrition in the cardboard packaging than its contents we are entranced into this spell that we should be happy and healthy like the actors in the advert.

Another point raised in this book is of days lost to business because of illness; his point is what happened to people being able to recover without popping a pill? Of course someone is making money out of you. What about life being lost to days of business?

Now we are seeing this with the schools and education. The idea that children cannot have a few days off without the law being broken is ridiculous because we you see what goes on in a school such as when there is a cover teacher taking a class then the pupils would be better to have done work on their own at home BUT we are led to believe that any moment lost at school is a disaster as if every moment of every day is of dire importance; this is rubbish.

Many of the things being taught at school is more about teaching people to conform than to think. A point raised by Matthew Parris in the BBC Radio 4 programme Great Lives is that it seems that a standard education is an impediment for a ‘great life’ as most of the nominated lives on the programme were either self-educated, late educated or unconventionally educated. May be the very fact that their education is different makes them stand out from the crowd.

I am suggesting that as a great musician and artist you MUST think for yourself and be different because you will not become successful if you believe the way to make it is being on The Voice or X Factor, think about it Adele, Amy Winehouse or Ed Sheeran made it without the talent show circus.

So think for yourself, don’t take what the media gives you and ask yourself why the education system is built the way it is and if you are like most artistic people you will feel uncomfortable with the system, simply because it was not built for people to become musicians it was to make you someone more pliable.

 

Vic

 

 

 

 

 

 

How Much Time?

How much time do you need to spend on artwork before it is finished? When have you not done enough?
For someone like Picasso who could paint a bird on glass in a few minutes or Billy Childish who says that if a piece of work takes more than twenty minutes it really isn’t happening, the idea of spending ‘enough time’ on a piece of work is an interesting concept.
Maybe it all comes down to the vision of the artist that once it reaches that fulfilment it is done but that is a challenging problem for examination work at schools when you are dealing with children. I am just wondering if this is presented to pupils at all in their lessons. I know that it was not for me until I met one of the special teachers that you remember who do more than just teach you the subject they change you and the way that you think. My art teacher did this by asking me ‘why’. Just that simple question, not saying that I was right or wrong but he wanted me to know for myself why and the formulation of the answer made me think about why and what I was doing.
I suspect that for the pupils of art it says more about what the teacher needs to show and what boxes they need to tick than what it says about the pupil. When someone tells you that even though they have spent hours on their work it still ‘is not enough’ you need have the vision of what is required, then do it and it IS finished.

Vic

 www.bluescampuk.co.uk

You already know

There is a charming tale of Chekov’s about a man who tried to teach a kitten to catch mice. When it wouldn’t run after them, he beat it, with the result that even as an adult cat, it cowered with terror in the presence of a mouse. ‘This is the man’ Chekov adds, ‘who taught me Latin.’ - Bertrand Russell ’Freedom versus Authority in Education’ 1928

 Nothing new here but have we the bravery to see through what seems the ‘right way’ at the moment; the thing of fashion that we will look back at and think, not only did not work but it was also wrong.

Beating the information into children was the way to teach from ancient Rome to recent times this was thought to be ok and some people would like to see that again. My concern is that authoritarian ways of teaching has now become deeply psychological and very difficult to spot if you are not aware of what is being done. I am sure however that people will look back and count some of today’s strategies as wrong. I would count among these the belief that people are stupid and that someone holds the answers; often the discovering of something happens inside you not from outside and this is so true with music that most of the information is already in there you just need to put a label on it.  

I frequently go on about Mr Gove and Mr Wilshaw but they perpetrate this kind of thinking and all they are doing is breaking the school system because there will be so few teachers left the system will have to change. What we are seeing is the killing of the goose that lays the golden eggs; there will be a very short term increase in eggs and then they will stop.

The way to teach is to find what excites the mind and then start from there, much of the learning will happen from the pupil themselves as they uncover what they already ‘know’ and their interest will make them learn more. 

Vic

 

 

 

Won't get fooled again.

Fear is actually convenient to the smooth functioning of an orderly society. A docile population which is terrified of the authorities in their various forms will more likely depend on objects and institutions to give them guidance, solidity, security and a sense of meaning. If you are fearful, then you are unlikely to riot and very likely to work hard and spend hard. – Tom Hodgkinson

 

Ok this may be a view of someone who is an anarchist but there are some very interesting points here and something that has been acted upon by societies throughout the ages and throughout the world.

When there was a problem in China they have always thrown the poets in jail first as they were the ones that spread dissent, now it is the bloggers. The easiest way of dealing with dissent is to find something or someone to fear who can become the ‘enemy outside’ or as the South Africans say the leopard outside.

The problem here is that without the voices of dissent nothing will change, or should I say nothing will change in a progressive way and the history of grand societies and cultures is they collapse from the inside.

Now the question to ask is ‘does the guitar still hold it rebellious streak?’ Now if the answer to that is yes then maybe this is something that we should look at in our playing and our teaching as this may something for our times like it did in the sixties.

So pick up your guitar and play, just like yesterday and get down on your knees and pray that we won’t get fooled again.

 

Vic

 

 

Revenge is a dish best served cold

My first piano teacher told my parents I was "not teachable because I would only learn by ear/by listening." Today I received a call at school from this unnamed individual (unaware who I was) where we were offered a piano master class but only if they were grade three and above.  It seems that after nearly 15 years this teacher is completely unable to adapt their teaching style to suit students who learn in other ways. The fundamental issue I have with this is that actually a good teacher can teach ANYBODY and can harness their skills.  It felt good telling them that on the telephone.  It felt better telling them that I was the Head of Music at the school and they had told me that some years ago.  "Revenge is a dish best served cold." Tom Knight
 
Tom is a good friend of mine and I was lucky enough to teach him a number of years back. Over the years I watched his development as a singer, guitarist, keyboard player, drummer and bass player and probably a few other instruments as well, but for me this little story tells a deeper message about the Old School of thinking about music and many other things that have written off much of the talent that was inherent in children by people that quite frankly might be good players but are shit teachers and there are still many of these about but fortunately they are not as mainstream as they were.
There is an extraordinary arrogance and ignorance in the belief that skills like music and art come from an intellectual elite so for those who in the past were from a lower class and therefore did not have the breeding to play music, or did not have any formal training because they were unable to afford lessons you were disregarded. This may seem an extreme statement but I can remember a time when the guitar was not considered a ‘serious’ instrument and I had this said to me a few times; my revenge was sweet as I gradually stole pupils from them as they migrated to the guitar.
It has been shown here that the classical pianist who contacted Tom was so totally wrong in his estimation of the young Thomas not only is he now the head of music at a school but because he is such an awesome musician and this was due to his commitment and belief in himself and not due to the pretentions of someone else.
Vic
 


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Do Not Think Listen.

Several years ago I was lucky to visit Ecuador and on arriving in Quito we visited the old quarter of the city. 
In a little street there was an old man elegantly turned out in a suit and wearing a Panama hat sitting playing a guitar. It was obvious that he was self-taught and was using the open strings and simple melodies on the top two strings of the instrument, very simple but very beautiful.
It was for me a profound moment where I really was touched by this man and his playing which seemed so genuine and heartfelt and it brought me back to what is was to be a musician.
For all of my knowledge of the instrument sometimes that magic does elude me and just experiencing someone playing from a real love of the guitar can take you back to what it was that hooked you in the first place.
Maybe we just need to not think for a while and listen with no judgement and by turning off the part of the brain that wants to analyse we can learn something new.
Vic


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We have to say goodbye to Monsieur Descartes

We have to say goodbye to Monsieur Descartes and see the world as an interdependent whole. We have to go beyond the idea of self-interest embrace the idea of mutual interest, reciprocity and interdependence.

Satish Kumar

 

Music whether in performance or teaching needs other people, we may spend many hours honing our skills on our own but it needs others for it to happen. Music needs an audience and it needs surroundings; it is about context and it is about transmitting to others creating oneness with all things within earshot.

As Satish puts it, the whole of western thinking for the last three hundred years have been tainted by the Frenchmen’s ideas. Science rests on this idea of separateness, look at how medicine isolates the problem and does not look at the holistic questions. Also the concept of the dominance of humans on the planet is leading us to a very dark place whose true identity will not be revealed until it is too late.

Whether it is playing to others, teaching people to play or creating music for others to play it is a form of society and group bonding that happens with music. Sometimes it takes a while for young musicians to come to this realisation that the music they create is for others but when they do that is when they truly become musicians.

Music and Art reflects exactly what we need in the rest of our lives in that we are in the same boat as one another and the same boat as the rest of nature, and if we do not realise this it is not just about the extinction of the Rhino and the Elephant it will be us. So maybe it is for the musician and artist to create something human and global maybe for people to link together to create music on the net with no composer just a collective.

Your turn………

 

Vic

 

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Learn to bake.

‘Learn to bake bread; you cannot provide good education on a bad diet. Head, heart and hands is what education should be not the three R's. Transformation happens through the hands so every school should have a permaculture garden. Have dignity for the ones that are working with their hands they are really creating something. Start your own job; ask ‘where is your education vocation?’ Money should be the slave, you should be master.’ Satish Kumar.



Paul McKenna remarked a few years ago that school was not about education it was about conformity and I at the time agreed with this; over the years it has just become a lot worse.

The problem is the balance between learning new things but not losing sight that learning is really about opening the mind and this often requires us to think radically about what we take as a given.

Experts are not fonts of wisdom; they are only resources of knowledge, which is different. Knowledge has the problem of application and also runs the risk of being out of date. It is one thing to have the knowledge that a tomato is a fruit but having the wisdom not to put it in a fruit salad. Wisdom is the realm of the unconscious and therefore lies outside of the realm of measuring and controlling, it is by nature ethereal and formless however it often manifests itself through creating and that creating will need knowledge but the conclusion of the creating is wisdom of how, what, why and where.

By equipping people to create and use their abilities to then sell and build businesses we will give the public a way of developing themselves, building self-esteem which is something the education system often ruins for many. Self-belief is a very important tool for mental wellbeing and health in society something that is not being properly addressed.

What a great way for children to learn about themselves and the world and be able to go out and make something happen that is truly beneficial for society.

Vic

 
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Great mystics and sages.

“We have drunk Soma and become immortal; we have attained the light, the Gods discovered.

Now what may foeman’s malice do to harm us? What, O Immortal, mortal man’s deception? (Rig-Veda (8.48.3))”

Soma is important because it is a crucial source of inspiration for the people who wrote the Vedas, ancient texts that originated in India, making up the oldest scriptures of Hinduism (around 1st century B.C).

Is it that the great seers, mystics, poets and sages of the past transcended the ordinary conscious of the human mind by taking drugs, starving themselves or dancing into a cosmic rapport with great ideas beyond the thoughts of the time? We know that the great names of Greek philosophy  attended the Eleusinian mysteries which included a drink that we would now view as psychoactive.

Are we missing something here in that these are banned by the governments around the world and in the past the taking of these things were classed as witchcraft? Maybe the idea of taking plants, dancing or starving oneself would change one’s mind so much that you break the normal indoctrination that has been foisted on you by society was always a step too far for society that wanted to control thought?

The problem is that we do not think from the mind-set of the people who did these things, it was not a ‘bit of fun’ in fact it is far from a bit of fun, it is the saga and quest that was alluded to in the stories of the ancients, it is the recurring theme of the facing of the death of the ego the facing of your fears in an initiation. Such events as these were fraught with danger and not for the light hearted.

The extreme searching conducted by these people were undertaken by societies that faced danger in ways that we do not in today’s society but as soon as something happens to us we have no resources to deal with them. Ok allow me to simplify a little on these things but I do believe that our mind-set creates the landscape for all decisions that we make and living in a ‘Nanny State’ does not allow us to face up to the fact that life is not fair, just listen to the way that people want to blame everyone else but not take responsibility for themselves.

There is much evidence for these extreme states of mind contributing to spiritual and the origins of religious thought of all of the major religions with the use of starvation and extreme stress. Visionary episodes caused by contaminated food and the consumption of liquids including those of VERY strong beers such as heather beer that was known to have psychedelic fungus on the plant referred to as fogg and a theory that the ‘wine’ that the early Christians drank was mimosa which was used as a dye for fabrics in the middle east, and it is known that it was used by mystics both Islamic and Christian giving rise as it were to the stories of ‘flying carpets’ and maybe Soma was such a drink. If one looks at this early Christian and Muslim art it is incredibly visionary and although different from the Hindu art is also 'otherworldly'.

I will look at how music can create 'higher' states in the future but just open your mind to the possibility that some of the great developments in society, art and thought may have come from activities that are illegal, why is that?.  

Vic

 

OCD. Is it the Golden Goose?

I was talking to some artist friends of mine and I found it interesting that they all said they had OCD. Their attention to detail was very acute and it became obvious that their ‘condition’ was part of their skill. ‘Obsession is an important part of what makes me artistic,’ was one comment that was made in fact ‘I cannot see how you could produce work without it’, they went on to say.
Maybe the labelling of this condition as an illness maybe shooting the goose that lays the golden egg in that we may be losing the artists in our midst by trying to help those with states of mind that ‘normal’ people term as an impediment.
In the distant past the differences were often embraced as a gift but there is a theory that these differences were subject to a form of religious racism. In the west these Christian ‘values’ have been incorporated into our thinking including the idea that the experts have the answers and the public need to be saved. The experts have swapped their church robes for white coats but I would caution that the things that look right today may not be right in the future as our descendants look back to us. Ask yourself how confident the people in the past were with the teachings of the Church? Were they convinced they were right? They had God on their side; of course they believed they were right. Now we are confident, we are right and we have our god, science on our side.
The one thing that seems so evident is that science never seems to spot the unexpected consequence, the black swan, and how can it? However it can look sceptically at its actions and maybe see that often they are taking us down roads of no return.
How much longer will it be that anything that deviates from the norm will be considered something to be changed, this was tried in the most draconian terms with homosexuality but something like thinking differently is much harder to defend against because in many cases it can be a problem if the world is wired up differently to your world, that does not necessarily mean it is wrong, just different, and to be a great artist you need  to be different.
Vic
  


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Brainwashing warning from Aldous Huxley

‘There will be in the next generation or so a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude and producing dictatorship without tears so to speak. Producing a kind of painless concentration camp for the entire society so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but rather will enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda, or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods, and this seems to be the final revolution.’-  Aldous Huxley
 
Interesting thoughts of Aldous Huxley and he may be correct in many ways; the trouble is if he is correct we will not know! When you watch programmes like The Voice and X Factor you are being swept into someone’s idea of how fame is created which for most musicians seems a total sham but for the general population and particularly children that is how it works.
The strength of brainwashing is that it is easy to rebut criticism by saying it is a conspiracy theory or it is subversive thinking but if you look back in history that was the defence of many governments which in hindsight we can see but civil populations at the time did not, mostly because they trusted their leaders.
I am not attempting to change the political system but I would say that this sort of thing is a mind-set and mind-sets do not restrict themselves to one place they become the zeitgeist for the time. Here is an example of this during the time of mass production lines. This idea of production lines was adopted by Stax Records and Studio One who had a resident band and the singers would come in and work on a song then leave in time for another to come in and so on, like a revolving door. It produced great records of course but it meant that the artists were working with the musicians set by the studio.
Look at the ideas that coming out from the government; low crime figures, better economic growth, Olympic Games, etc.  It is the selection of these ideas that Huxley would have found troubling, the fact that few people are killed by terrorists and many are killed directly by the car and indirectly by the pollution caused by the car; however the government uses terrorism as the tool for anything from immigration to putting CCTV cameras on every corner. I am personally more afraid of the driving by the middle classes in Sussex than by a man with a beard from Birmingham.
The pharmacology aspect is interesting to me, that drugs taken in order to keep you from being ill is the best business model of anything I have ever seen. If only we as teachers and musicians could keep being paid on a regularly basis just in case their ‘patient’  were required to play in the future we would all be minted.
Use music as a way of allowing you to think creatively, open your mind and be different from what is set out for you by society because you are greater than society says that you are.
 
Vic
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We are much greater than we think that we are. Consciousness sees. Nicholas Mann

Let me ponder this week on the above phrase and play a little with it. Have you noticed that great artists, musicians and inventers often do their best work when they are young? This seems rather odd as we could all look at the development through experience would mean that our best work would happen AS WE GOT OLDER.

I have watched young children learning the guitar and noticed that when they are younger they will take on pieces that are too complicated for them but because that like them and they want to play the piece they can achieve amazing things. I think it is because they can fantasise themselves playing the music and this works on the deeper structure of the above quote.

We are limited by what we believe whatever that belief is so when you are young you have very little beliefs about yourself and therefore are not restricted but what you KNOW.

What we believe is very important because we limit ourselves to that, so if you believe that you are the best blues guitarist ever you will never be good at playing jazz and if you are the best Jazz guitarist ever you will never make any money as a rock musician and let’s face it you may not make any money as a jazz guitarist either, sorry it is an old joke.

My take on this is that we can make our own world by what we believe because believing creates the template for the mind and it will see what it believes. Therefore if you ARE a great musician great things will occur to you because they will not be screen out by the unconscious as being incompatible to you. Also if you believe that all things pass through you as if you are a conduit (which is a common theme with great artists) then you will open your mind to new things that seem not to come from you. I have seen this happen under hypnosis and it is quite something.

There was a story that I have quoted before about someone asking Richard Branson for a business idea to which Branson looked around and said ‘look at that outside heater. Find out who is making them and start selling them yourself’. This was a couple of years before the boom in patio heaters that swept the country; it wasn’t because they were not there it was only him who saw it and not the journalist.

 Vic

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RGT Electric Guitar Exams - Grade 3, Grade 4 & Grade 5

“There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.” - Leonard Cohen

I was listening to Van Morrison’s Brown Eyed Girl and someone pointed out to me that the bass player’s E string was out of tune, I had not noticed this before and I then thought of the squeaking bass drum pedal on John Bonham’s kit which you can clearly hear on Since I’ve Been Loving You. I could add the out of tune guitar of Ike Turner at the beginning of Chain of Fools by Aretha Franklin and many more and what that seems to say to me is that these imperfections do not impair the greatness of the music if anything they add to it, like some form of magic dust or charisma to the sound that makes it real unlike the highly polished computer processed recordings that we have today.

Billy Childish commented that primitiveness is important in art and that technique can get in the way of the work and I believe that this can most definitely be an important aspect to our playing and teaching for people to connect to the real emotion of music. Maybe there is too much emphasis on the perfection of the playing and not the emotional performance in exams. If this were not the case in music generally that emotion was the real power of music the old blues players, punk and grunge musicians would not have sold any records in the past and the listening public would have all been listening to the beautiful technical classical recordings.

So just like the broken Japanese pottery that is put back together with gold in the cracks to show that a broken bowl is more valuable than one that has no experience of being broken maybe we should look for the cracks and breaks in our own playing because that is where you are.

Vic

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