Dancing with your shadow and feeding your demons.

Dancing in the light, the search for perfection and technical brilliance?

Why is it that the greatest artists are flawed? Jonny Cash, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin to name just a few. The performances from these where far from perfect in fact they teetered on the edge of disaster for most of the time, concerts of Amy Winehouse for instance.

What is it that we seem to miss here intellectually? We have a concept which makes us aim for perfection yet obviously realise the reverse unconsciously otherwise we would not be captivated by the failings of these masters.

Are these personal demons of the above artists the things that drove them and made them so captivating? Let us as a thought experiment imagine that they were and take our psychological shadows and let them in for a while.

There is a Buddhist concept which I think comes from Tibetan Buddhism of feeding your demons by invoking them, getting to know them and then 'feeding them' sometimes literally. They need feeding anyway and if ignored will disrupt your life as well as feeding off you, so bring them in! I look at it like the builders and labourers that are doing stuff for you, make sure that you pay them and treat them with respect and do not ignore their requests for payment.

The shadow side of our nature contains most of the juice that we need for artistic expression, if you do not believe me sit through a modern church service and listen to the music. If you are not part of the reverie then the music will make you feel like you are being beaten to death by soft furnishings.

There is something important in our failings and inadequacies that can be recognised and used. Hendrix was not the best guitarist technically for his time, not by a long shot, but he touched more people than any other guitarist and his performances although flawed were entrancing.

Instead of looking for perfection and dancing in the light step into the shadows and dance with the shade. Invite the parts of you that you do not like, be it your character flaws- anger, jealousy, greed or your ability flaws- lack of patience, heavy handed,  inaccurate playing and let them join the feast see what they bring to the party. Stop pretending to be someone else. Stop being the shop front that you show the world and bring the workers from the back room out. Do what Freddie Mercury did, lay it out for all to see but in your way and see what happens.

Your demons may have some cool tricks up their sleeves. Let’s face it they have had to put up with you all these years.

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk

Music summer school for rock blues reggae soul jazz ….

The world is made of words

The world is made of words, and if you know the words that the world is made of you can make of it whatever you wish. Terence McKenna

In the beginning was the word in fact it is possible as the myths say that life only continues because we still tell the story of life. It is certainly true that once we have a name for something we have some way of controlling it. Like with music if we know what key it is in, what the chords are, how the rhythm is constructed and we have labelled those with words we have a way of manipulating information and we can transfer the ideas to something else or to replicate it.

We need to give voice and name to the things that we want but we are encouraged in this society to contemplate the things that we do not want in our lives such as illnesses, depression, lack of money,  all because someone is making money out of your fear.

Think about the words that you use maybe this could be within your work or just your day-to-day life. Be aware of the power of words being used on you, this is not a new thing of course it was done through religion being told from the pulpit, what to believe and how to be. Now is done through the media. I am sure that when we look back will see how ridiculous this is just in the same way 1940’s and 50’s Pathe News Reels set the tone of the messages which were condescending and aimed at the naïve.

 We need to speak in a commanding way using words that create desired outcomes we need to see and hear and recognise words that are being used on us to control our lives so that we take back control from the media and society in general.

It is now time to wake up and build a new a new life with new words. Consider why songs are powerful. Listen to the following songs in the days to come

We will Rock You, Wild Thing, Riders on the Storm, All Right Now, Moondance, and The Boys Are Back in Town.

You can add many to this list, they all command driven lyrics telling you something not asking you, telling you with authority.

So go and change things

 Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk  summer school, learn to rock  

Something Wrong With You

There is one ‘right’, ‘normal’ or ‘healthy’ way for human brains and human minds to be configured and to function (or one relative narrow ‘normal’ range into which the configurational functioning of the human brains and minds ought to fall). If your neurological configuration and functioning (and as a result your ways of thinking and behaving) diverged substantially from the dominant standard of ‘normal’ then there is something wrong with you. – Nick Walker.

When you first read the above you would agree, however this was written by someone who has autism and the article it was taken from demolishes the idea that there is something ‘wrong’ and replaces it with something ‘different’. The power of words is such that we agree to many things without a challenge because we are told them as a fact and therefore what to believe.

With that in mind listen to the news and be aware how much you are being told. See how that resonates with you then challenge it by thinking, ‘why this why now’ and then see what happens to the BBC spell. This process goes on all the time I see it in schools with the idea that a child who thinks differently has a ‘labelled’ condition, the path to hell is paved with good intent and it is easy to say that the child has a problem but the awareness of difference is important here as it might suggest that the context needs looking at.

Anyone who has had lessons with me in the past who were dyslexic would attest that when you approach things from a different angle will see skills and strategies that the quote ‘normal’ do not have. I make a point when being told that somebody is dyslexic or has some other condition that that may benefit certain aspects of playing music. This is often greeted with surprise by the parent but it is true that these people are far more sensitive musically than the people who are the norm.

Now I am not saying that these people will not find life in this society difficult because there is a problem with society and that is the issue. I also do not have an answer because there isn’t one, in actual fact this is born from the same thought structure as the problem itself. However embracing difference is something that we need to do and need to be aware of. Being able to spot dualism in language patterns and why it happens in the way that it does goes some way to expose how language is used ‘on you’.

So how does that feedback into music and the arts? The last thing you want as an artist is to be normal; to embrace difference and find its beauty and its skills whether that is yourself or in others and work with it creating new possibilities. Someone who is autistic will have strategies in order to fit in and these are resources that we often ignore because they come from someone who has ‘something wrong with them’ however in another point in the timeline these people would have been the seers, navigators and healers in the community, but not now. I guess that is the price progress.

as things move in cycles it is possible that we could return to a point in time when things we consider as a medical condition now will be viewed more optimistically but I cannot see that in the foreseeable future. We can make a start by realising that the benchmarks of normality that we had set for ourselves are not real and to some extent they have been put there by people who wish to control aspects of society. So be troublesome! The pointers for this are the artists and musicians of the 1960s who obviously had some form of ‘labelled condition’ in retrospect such as Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and at least to some extent John Lennon (addictive personalities, compulsive behaviours and all on the spectrum) and they all had a massive CIA and FBI file on each of them, I think that says it all.

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk three day music summer school for rock