Attention deficit disorder is the order of the day

Attention deficit disorder is the order of the day from many young people now. It is a fact of life in the educational system, the inability - or the unwillingness, or both - to focus for the sake of scholastic and social and personal success haunts the classroom. The young and the old are the canaries in the Anthropocene coal mine, our sentinel species.-  Stephen Jenkinson

I have noticed over the years the lack of concentration that people now have (and I include myself here), technology obviously has a role in this but I am interested in Jenkinson’s view on how memory is being lost. Not only in the individuals but also in society, as if it is not important and by extension technology is all we need. This is the drift towards AI however what happens to our humanness?

I also see that part of being human is our ability to be musical, be that singing or playing an instrument. Jenkinson’s view is that we are becoming increasingly sick in our minds, losing our memory and this is evident in both the young and the old thus showing a change in the ecosystem. Sentinel species in the world at large show environmental change, butterflies for instance will decline or increase with subtle changes in the ecosystem. For us the young and the old are the first to show signs of change. We have already travelled far down this road but things are accelerating now, we may have already reached and maybe even passed the tipping point.

Everything that has abundance devalues; information, music, and food have all become degraded, lacking in spirit and sustenance. It is the postmodern nightmare that all things are relative and there is no such thing as truth, just an abundance of information, this is given us Trump, Putin and Brexit.

We need to develop something that is old, an old skill an old technology, make music and make songs that tell stories, myths or epics that engage the mind and bring back memory remember the stories that our ancestors believed had to be told continuously otherwise the world would stop, may be it has, maybe we need to restart it.

Vic Hyland www.bluescampuk.co.uk

Intelligence is proportional to population but talent appears not to be

Intelligence is proportional to population but talent appears not to be related to population numbers. I am living in the city on the edge of the Rocky Mountains; the population is much greater than it was in Shakespearean London, and almost everyone here is literate, and has many thousands of dollars spent on his education. Where are the poets and playwrights and painters and composers? Remember that there are hundreds of thousands of literate people here while in Shakespeare’s London very few people could read. The great art of this part of the world was the art of the native people. The whites flounder about trying to be original and failing miserably. Keith Johnstone

The above quote is taken from Keith Johnstone’s excellent book called ‘Impro’ which is about improvisation and the theatre. Johnstone is a playwright and teaches improvisation in a number of places including the Royal Court Theatre. A lot of his work stemmed from his difficulty in the education system and then his experience whilst training as a teacher where he met the inspirational art teacher Alan Sterling. Sterling’s work seem to be primarily influenced by the Chinese classic the Tao De Ching.

What seems to be problematic with education is not the teaching of maths or the teaching of language or anything specific but the parameters that are set in order to teach in a school, such as the chosen period of history and the way that it is explained.

The contextual nature of education is the main problem, the fact that children have to sit on chairs and do their work at tables, the fact that they are not allowed to run around, the fact that they are not allowed to play around , and of course this is a kind of programming and conditioning which is dismissed as a form of lefty conspiracy theory but the fact is these things have extraordinary control over people in a form of hypnotic arrangement of the brain.

We have now arrived at the point where all of the schools resemble some form of detention centre with levels of security that one has to go through in order to get in but what does this actually do to the mind of a child in education? Does it not say to them that the world outside is so dangerous that you have to be protected from it? Does it not say that the authorities are the only ones who can be trusted not even your parents can be trusted that is why you have the ChildLine telephone number and your parents have not been checked by an agency.

On the face of it these ideas seem to be okay but they are not, maybe we need that sense of danger, a sense of risk instead of it being mitigated out of our lives because what actually happens when you really do meet the wild world outside? You do not have anything as a resource to fall back on.

My concern is in the area of musical and artistic creativity and there is no way that you can be truly creative without dealing with the real world, all I see in the world is a situation where no one is allowed to fail and in order to ‘pass’ you have to conform to the criteria however how many times in the history of the arts are things that were once considered as the bench mark superseded by something that was considered unartistic or even wrong? So is that an example of a system trying to perpetrate itself? I think it is but in the arts it has a problem whereas in other areas it is more resistant to change.  We have lost that creative pit unless there is social problems and one can see that in our own life times the blues and rock boom coming out of the 50’s austerity into the period of change in the 60’s and then the problems of the 70’s giving us rock styles and then punk etc.

So Shakespeare’s London,  a den of thieves and criminals a dangerous place to be, full of Catholic plotters hired assassins and great artists many of whom were also spies, mostly for the Queen. Within that colourful world were a set of geniuses that set the Tudor world alight, Shakespeare, Marlow, Francis Bacon, John Dee, Walsingham, Sir Walter Raleigh to name a few.

Maybe this is something that Brexit may do again to England (because in a few years it may only be England) things might be so shit that it will act as a good fertiliser to the arts.

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk  three days of playing music in a band

We do not stop playing because we grow old.

We do not stop playing because we grow old, but rather we grow old because we stop playing. Karl Groos ‘The Play of Animals’

It is often said that adults find it harder to learn new things than children because a child’s mind is more flexible and the adult has lost that ability and in a way that is true but not because we have grown out of it.

Interestingly it is the most educated of the adults that I meet, it is the doctors and the professional people who are the most affected.  I have written about this before, this time I am writing about how we might start to fix it.

The type play we are talking about is the childlike imaginary play, for those of you who are parents will know how difficult this is when playing with young children to get back to the imaginary which you found so easy to do as a child. You have to lose yourself in the imaginary and allow that to take you on a journey without trying to rationalise or bring yourself back. 

This imaginary childlike play is fantastic for writing songs; you can start the idea in some sort of random fashion and then improvise your way into the story, it might be best to use a recording device so you can capture the story without losing the trance, otherwise you could 'automatically' write your experience as you go along.

This is a similar idea to some of the techniques used by comic strip writers such as Grant Morrison who does it from more of an 'invocation' but looking through artistic eyes this could be considered as childlike play but through the eyes of something like Grant Morrison would be viewed as some form of wizardry.

This ability to play like a child, immersing yourself in a dreamlike world which draws upon more of a phenomenological perspective is a key aspect to using the mind in a creative way and it is a key aspect to staying young mentally hence the quote at the top. Our rational thinking (which is given us modern technologies) has actually stopped us being able to think in the fullness that our ancestors probably had. Remember if you go back far enough all problem solving involved doing everything, no experts, no shops suppling a remedy, you did it all.

So be irrational, dream like everything is possible and ready for you to use, see the opposite in things just for the hell of it and see how that changes your perspective. Give objects that you see a different name and see how that sharpens your senses like seeing everything new.

Remember that most of the creation myths involve some form of dreaming whether that is in Hinduism or some other native aboriginal storytelling, certainly in the world of shamanism there is a belief of the world being as you dream it, and in many forms of ancient culture there is a  belief that  the stories need to be told for the universe to continue.

So this time let us praise the daydreamer, the one who stares out of the window, who is not paying attention but is drifting along on a flight of fancy, maybe that flight of fancy has more power and more beauty than the lesson that they are sitting in.

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk  learn to play like a rock hero

Wisdom in music

Beloved Pan, and all ye other gods who haunt this place, make me beautiful within, and grant that what-ever happens outside of me will help my soul to grow. May I always be aware that true wealth lies in wisdom, and may my “gold” be so abundant that only a wise man can lift and carry it away. For me that is prayer enough.

– Socrates

For a number of years now I have wrestled with the question,’ what direction should my work in music take?’ The Internet is absolutely awash with people showing you every conceivable guitar solo, song or technique and the idea of adding more to this maelstrom in that way is rather a waste of time.

Nowadays there are more guitar teachers than people wanting to learn or certainly seems like that! One thing that keeps me interested in the subject of teaching music is the step beyond the technical, song; the stuff that people normally get hooked up on, in other words it is the wisdom behind it all. What is it that pervades the mind of a great musician? Whether that is a Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, Andre Segovia, Paganini, JS Bach, Art Tatum or Duke Ellington, really all the stuff that they did is not significant to us unless we can unpack it, not the knowledge but of the wisdom of what they do. The wisdom can manifest in many ways beyond the song, whereas concentrating on the knowledge does not, which is what I see mostly, it seems to confine us.

Now this is not a criticism of people that are already out there but more a critique in the way we think, that we learn in a system which has been foisted on us by the education system and society at large. We cannot possibly learn greatness in that way just filling one’s head with stuff because it does not answer the question of how do we arrive at the genius level which often happens at a very young age. Notwithstanding the 10,000 hour rule, wisdom is the thing that creates something exciting and something new that expresses something deep down and that can often very early in an artist’s career.

At this point if you are finding it difficult to draw the comparison between knowledge and wisdom think it is simply expressed that knowledge tells us that a tomato is a fruit, but wisdom tells us not to put in a fruit salad.  Learning music from that perspective gives us great insight into the musicians and the art form and the knowledge and the technique is purely a toolkit to express that and that is where the practice comes in developing the toolkit.

Socrates states another good point here when he refers to wanting to be beautiful within and for the gods to grant whatever happens outside to help that interiority to grow, that interiority is where the wisdom resides.

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk the music summer school in Kent UK

Set point theory

In the 1980’s some scientists came up with the idea of an equilibrium point to explain how people who dieted returned to their original weight after finishing their regime, they coined the term Set Point Theory. The body seemed to have a memory of its weight and would return to it after the diet. This idea then was then taken up by others who saw similar things in other areas such as self-improvement, sports training, and health.

Set Point Theory is something I would like to suggest is a natural phenomenon.  A guitar string that is too tight when you de-tune it will sharpened up again as if trying to return to its sharp status, a slack string will do the opposite, going flat after being tuned.

I can see these points in one’s ability to play music, to practice, to become effective as a professional, to focus on something, to read music, to be creative etc. we can look at these ideas as a comfort zone but I think the idea of a Set Point is more organic and not just a state of laziness.

So how do we move the Set Point? Let us return to the guitar string. Putting on a set of nylon classical strings and getting them to settle in tune will take a long time unless you overtighten the string and let it naturally flatten into tune and if you do this a few times it will have changed its equilibrium point. Maybe this is the thing that is needed for weight loss, go beyond the level that you are aiming for and then naturally put weight on to reach your desired goal.  

So for improved practicing maybe a week or two of extreme practice, so when you get back to normal patterns of life you will have increased your capacity to find time and the inclination to learn.

Can breaking one Set Point affect another? Can fasting change one’s ability to play music? On the face of it this is crazy however I am not so sure, if you look at it the mind is causing the patterns in all areas so changing something radically in one area can alter other areas, of that I am pretty confident.

This might explain the effectiveness of ritualistic behaviour, around initiations in particular, for instance rituals change your mind space, that is evident and if you think this is not the case then you have not been through an initiation. Not only do they affect you but also they can affect other aspects of your life, love, family, jobs et cetera you could do something like fasting as well as extreme practicing to break the blocks that control your set point so that it can be reset. Maybe that helps to overwhelm the mind to make changes, this is certainly a technique from hypnosis where sensory overload is used to induce trance.

I know this seems a bit out there but in these days of caution and caveats we need to do something to break the iron cage.

Vic www.bluescampuk.co.uk music summer school for rock blues soul funk reggae ….

You Want It Darker? – Leonard Cohen

Okay let’s go darker from the last article, let us plumb the depths, we had dancing with your shadow, feeding the demons, let us go and feast with them and invite them for a holiday let us look at how music is used for stirring up the aspects of the human condition which is the right of Genghis Khan, and the Marquis De Sade would find embarrassing.

Invoking ideas of as medieval people might have said spirits demons may be a way of changing ones reference point or set point.

There is much to be said that there is an equilibrium or set point in our health, wealth and wellbeing whether it is social or financial situation that we find ourselves returning to. It is often similar to our parents income their health and weight and luck (yes that has been researched). So how do we change that equilibrium point?  The answer might be found in a guitar string.

If you have a new set of strings on a guitar they will need to be retuned to get them up to pitch especially the nylon strings and one thing you can do is to over tighten them so that they settle back down into tune. In the same way we may need to go further than we want to settle into maybe break what you are before remaking, leave the job, the marriage, leave your old self, maybe going to India is not so much are finding yourself and more leaving yourself behind.

So here is where darkness comes in. Take to yourself to a place that frightens you, saddens you, do a survival course that pushes you to the edge, do a marathon. Maybe the Christian idea of giving everything away is more to do with this than charity.

Now what has this got to music? Well everything from music that you use ritualistically if that is your jam, write a song about your intention that you find challenging to put out there. Such as your greatest fears, anger, greed, loss and get them into a song.

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk Music summer school for rock and blues

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 ….