Problem is, it’s a lousy tune and nobody’s buying. So what can a lumbering dinosaur do to get some new love? Oldest trick in the biz: get your legions to dress gothic.

Of course I’m not talking about the band, but the UN agency.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Do you sometimes have the feeling that the world you live in is a badly written horror flick? You aspire to freedom, peace, happiness and prosperity, but there seems to be no shortage of toxic surprises just lurking around the corner?

Problem is, you don’t have access to the script, nor do you know who the scriptwriter is. You only see the actors, basking in red carpet glory and awards ceremony honors.

Well, kudos once again for the good people at The Onion for pointing out the obvious.

Ominous Music Heard Throughout U.S. Sends Nation Into Panic

There, you heard it, the golden rule of horror flicks: “when you’re standing there relieved, that is when the horrible event is most likely to occur…” Do me a favor: keep that in mind this fall, when you’re standing in line waiting for your swine flu shot.

Just kidding: of course it’ll be fully tested and safe.

(post intro image credit: stuart anthony)

Today, an attempt at enlightenment.

I’ve been around for 38 years now. I have to tell you that of all things that puzzle me in life, this one really stumps me: where do so many people get their deeply-ingrained fear of thinking?

After all, read – or listen to – any of the great philosophers East and West, and in no time you’ll have found a second home for your own thoughts and musings.

No impatience, no sense of futility, no dismissal. Just the “Joy of Thought”, of enriching your awareness, and that strange wonder of being conscious that comes over you once in a while!

enter The Realist…

“No, no, no. Not so!”, says the Realist: “too much thinking will paralyze you!”. Or, “life demands action…”, and “it’s totally horrible and useless to be stuck in your head”, etc.

Now, who could disagree with that?

But, but, but: any admissions to the value of thinking? “Only if it helps you solve real-life problems!”

So is philosophy forever doomed to having to justify itself to Lord Utility? And how did Lord Utility get so much street cred, anyway?

Well, I have my own ideas about this, but I thought I should let Zen philosopher Alan Watts (thanks Vic!) open up the discussion… (Musicians beware: Alan wants you in the front lines of his battle!)

Click here to view the embedded video.

“they made you miss everything…”

Ever try to write down an account of your school years? What about the last biography of a famous person you read? How were their years in school presented in the book?

Details I’ve come across over and over again in people’s accounts of their schooling: perhaps a stimulating course, or an excellent teacher, or worthy “extra-curricular” activities (sports, music, theater, etc.) here and there… But for the most part, for most people:

Years in school = a tremendous waste of time and energy, and way too much tedium and negative social interaction to justify the happy bits!

In other words: if schooling is ever referred to as a positive experience, it’s because it happened to be set in a stimulating and supportive environment that respected the principle of learner autonomy.

Now that doesn’t sound like our public school system, does it? So how are we to account for the life-sucking monster Modern Education has become?

independent thinking: not in the curriculum

“Too many teachers are mediocre!” … ” If we only we didn’t have so many lame-ass, career-obsessed parents!” … “the cuts to public education are relentless!”…

Agreed, there’s room for much improvement in the existing system. But don’t you agree with Alan, that improvements and reform are all for naught if they lead to the same basic outlook in life?

As Watts points out, the very design of our education system is based on a carefully cultivated social mythology of “success”: life as a long, drawn-out “journey” with a beginning (our individual potential), plenty of “obstacles and challenges” along the way (preparation for economic life), and a happy ending (our social and professional success).

Witness the kind of talk we hear in a typical high school graduation ceremony: “preparing our youth for life”, “going out into the adult world”, “the virtues of effort and perseverance”, “through trial and error”, “living up to your full potential”, etc.

But, wait a minute: what are we graduating from, anyway? Doesn’t this lofty language prove that we’re not just graduating from school, but graduating into “adult life“? That our educational system, with its grades and degrees, is some kind of long, drawn out process of ritual initiation? That through schooling and its compartmentalization of knowledge, we are actually being vetted for potential upward mobility in social and professional life?

we are the world, we are the hierarchy

There you have it, there’s a permanent contradiction at the heart our educational system: the official discourse on the primacy of teaching and learning – the “No Child Left Behind” kind of talk so loved by politicians – running up against the credentialing function of educational institutions, a process that relentlessly standardizes our unique learning personalities for career-readiness in public or private corporate hierarchies.

The question remains: if so many of us are aware of the nature of the Juggernaut, then why do we allow this state of affairs to be perpetuated? And what do we have to lose in letting alternative concepts of education flourish, as legally available options open to all parents and children?

But it’s pretty much how I feel when, in polite company, we slide into that “to each his/her own tastes” relativistic chatter, Cheshire cat grins and all. Without the qualifying debate about how people acquire and develop tastes to begin with.

Also thought the music “excellence” wigs out there might appreciate the reminder that audiences care more for emotional relevance than peak performance.

Click here to view the embedded video.

“I WANT MY ROCK STARS DEAD!” Yep, it’s none other than stand-up gadfly Bill Hicks, appearing in Montreal’s Just For Laughs Festival in 1991.

Now, uh, what’s Bill doing here? This routine is probably one of the most “shock and awe” comedy segments I’ve ever come across, fully disorienting to any poor soul out on the town for an evening of fun and laffs.

“Shock and Awe“? Perhaps the only thread linking a doctrine of state terrorism to Hicks’ routine is the belief that shock can be therapeutic.

As distinctly American as this philosophy might seem, Hicks’ “shock comedy” act does bear kinship resemblance to the nihilistic absurdist performances of the dadaists, who gave voice to the trauma and desensitization effects of war during the giddy, light-headed post-WWI years in Paris and Berlin.

At least, that’s how I explain the New Kids on the Block/Hitler Youth robot dance Bill does. As fellow comedian Brett Butler put it:

For all the talk about Bill being like Hendrix or Dylan or Jim Morrison or Lenny Bruce, it was Jesus Bill wanted to be. He wanted to save us all. But Bill got freeze-framed in the scene where Jesus went through the Temple and said ‘This is my father’s house, and you’ve turned it into a den of thieves.’ Because that’s what Bill always wanted to do, he wanted to be Christ as his angriest.

So there you have it: Bill Hicks is a Dada Dandy for the Deep South, and a very, very angry Jesus. Your archetypal role model.

I learned about Carlin’s new never-to-be-captured-on-HBO routine in a wonderful interview piece by Jay Dixit for the Psychology Today blog done just nine days before Carlin’s death.

There it is, right at the end of the interview:

Dixit: So the last question is: What are you working on now?

Carlin: I have a piece of material that I’m doing on stage these days. I’m in Las Vegas now. I do weekends here, I do four nights on weekends as part of my year of touring. I go mostly to concert halls and theaters, around 80 or 90 of ‘em a year. But I come down here around three or four. So I’m down here. This piece of material called, “There’s Too Much Fucking Music,” which is my way of looking at how much music there is, I guess. It’s just my way of looking at the world and saying something that people don’t notice and figuring out a new way. And it’s filled with exaggeration and stuff. I’m doing that on stage a little bit. I’m not giving myself any pressure.”

O Irony of ironies for amateurmusicians.net! Carlin’s “new routine” successfully captures a perspective I’ve long been trying to articulate through this blog, in a single sentence:

There’s just too much music goin’ around these days!

on training to be an artist a human

The Dixit interview is valuable for many reasons – not the least being its blessed good timing, days before Carlin’s death. For me though, it especially stands out as an example of the rich results you can get from a well-prepared Q&A, conducted with someone you truly admire.

Kinda like a good Playboy interview, minus the pompous titties.

The essential lessons I got from this Carlin interview:

1. what his working methods were
2. his concept of the comedian
3. how method and mission inform one another

On Carlin’s concept of the comedian: a jester should always aim to be a court jester. A comedian should speak directly to power. A comedian should take risks. Reputation risks are therefore the holy grail of the comedian-cum-social-commentator.

With this in mind, we see that training to be a comedian is not simply a matter of coming up with good jokes. Rather, it’s about cultivating a point of view on the world, life, on absolutely everything, and doing so with courage. Thanks to Carlin therefore, I now understand that comedy is one of the many “genres” of human knowledge, one which leverages the “strategy of surprise” to teach important insights.

My own fave approach to obtaining insight is through cultivating paradox. In case you hadn’t already guessed.

So what did George Carlin do all these years, behind the scenes? He trained himself to be perceptive, as a life-long occupation. Indeed, the Dixit interview reveals that Carlin had a process for training his observational sense, a process he refined (and upgraded) over the course of his 50 years in the field of entertainment.

This attitude seems to me to be the psychological and spiritual key to the committed artist, whether amateur or professional. Without which you spend your life swimming in other people’s soundtracks.

where’s George?

All said and done, we certainly haven’t finished hearing from George Carlin. Therefore let this post be a message-in-a-bottle for all you Carlin fanatics out there: if you should ever come across a recorded version of the above-mentioned routine – text, audio, video – please forward me a copy! Or post it on Youtube!

With Carlin’s wise (and blunt) words, I suspect we’ll once again remember why we created the “off” button, and why we’re so afraid to use it.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Person George Carlin

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This blog figures in my accomplishments list. And though in many ways I don’t really qualify as a true blogger (I don’t post with enough regularity), underneath it all I try to keep a consistent approach.

“And what consistency might that be, Mr. Eclectica”? you ask.

Well, I’d say it’s an underlying ethic. I’m only motivated to research, write and post when I’ve got some insight to share. So this blog is definitely not a news or current events blog.

I’m also motivated by a sense of mission. Which goes like this:

WHEN YOU’RE TIRED OF THE COSTUME PARTY…

What I’m advocating through my writing, at bottom, can be best described as “sensibility training through learning a musical instrument“.

The idea is very simple. I’m reminded of it everytime I watch a YouTube clip of Bill O’Reilly – or any other traumatized (and traumatizing) war-monger.

What does the world need more of? Sensible People (and if that sounds too Brit-snotty to you: Perceptive People).

I start from a premise of basic perceptual awareness:

Q – What happens when your communication environment saturates your senses all day (and night) long?

A – My hunch: you become numb and your senses “close off”. Your receptiveness to new experiences atrophies.

Paradoxically, in this environment you need more and more intense stimulus to even feel alive, and to know who you are. “Culture” is therefore experienced as a closed loop of identity consumption and various forms of media addiction.

That’s what I mean by “the costume party”.

look at me! I’m worth loving, too!

Important to the amateurmusicians.net approach: I offer this concept of “sensibility training” in contrast to the more common motive of “getting the attention I need by putting on a musical act”.

This is not out of some higher-than-thou moral qualm, but because the attention-seeking ethic runs counter to the process of sensibility training to begin with.

It’s basic psychology, really.

Though self-expression is one of the key values of sensibility training, it’s narrow self-expression – or narcissism – that still dominates the airwaves today, a sure sign of our culture’s deep habit of sensory closure.

In contrast: what does it mean to seriously devote time and energy to learning a musical instrument, and a specific repertoire/genre? What is this learning doing for the learner?

open vs. closed

In terms of training, you may be wondering if there’s a distinction to be made between “sensibility” and “sensitivity”.

There is, unequivocally.

“Sensitivity training” refers to workplace initiatives that “help” employees learn the habits of thinking and doublespeak mandated by political correctness, to disallow “out of place” private judgment in a public context.

The habit that is learned at root is self-censorship. Which is what a lot of “sensible people” learn to do at a young age, thanks to “good rearing” and public education.

In opposition to this well-intentioned but insidious dogma, sensibility training is about getting people to gain self-knowledge – and knowledge about the world – by using rich, open and expressive means of communication.

Literally, sensibility training means: training the senses, learning a culture of the senses.

With regards to learning music, this means specifically: the process of painstakingly learning an instrument, and choosing a repertoire. The key skills and attitudes are: active listening and comparative musical analysis.

To obtain good results, a multi-genre and multi-disciplinary approach is key. Why?

As a musician, if you dedicate yourself to only one genre/style, you are reinforcing:

1. a tribal identity
2. a marketing category

As a learner, if you follow only one set of learning methods for each music style, you are reinforcing:

1. a fundamentalist attitude for one method over another
2. dependence over autonomy and self-direction

and before your attention drifts to that girl wearing a tight yellow t-shirt

Needless to say, there is a lot more to say on this topic, and this post should only be seen as a reminder of the basic motive for this blog.

In the final analysis: the discussion that needs to happen is on the significant role that a serious musician can play in today’s world, beyond cultural diversion.

That role to me is, in a nutshell: sensibility training. For both the musician and his/her audience.

Like: why does it seems to me that nobody uses the word “energy” more loosely than musicians (OK, maybe Feng Shui practitioners, aging hippies, UN Eco-Popes, yoga teachers and crystal healers are energy fluff-aholics, too. But on the whole…)?

For example, I’m a musician – just back from a vacation in my hometown of Winnipeg, Canada (“Spirited Energy” is the provincial slogan!) – and I’ll tell you this: whenever I go through downtown Winnipeg, I can’t help noticing an office building which really gives me the creeps.

I mean, it’s all bad vibes.

Yes, it’s the Credit Union Plaza, 215 Garry Street. Here’s the building data:

• Date: 1976
• Architect: Smith Carter Architects
• Some (previous and current) tenants: Credit Union Central, Department of Transportation and Government Services, Gaming Control Commission

Yes, yes, “bad vibes”! Like that black monolith in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001!

So, totally flaky? Or am I just oversensitive with regards to sinister-looking things, like those animals who go crazy two hours before a major earthquake?

Probably. But I’m also a curious guy.

feng phooey

Alright Ladies. I don’t want to be delving into Feng Shui or Ouija just yet. Rather, I’m going to consult a few muses, and see what they make of any “vibes” – real and imagined – emanating from this building.

First muse: the science of acoustics, the link between music and architecture.

Our key diagnostic tool will be the concept of harmonics. Harmonic and harmony share the same Greek root harmonia, meaning “joint, agreement, concord” (also a goddess in Greek mythology).

In acoustics, harmonics are the basic over-tones or frequencies which, blending together in the vibration of an air passage, drum surface or string length, and make up the pitch (note) and timbre (sound “color”) of a given musical instrument.

In music, tonal harmony is the set of tone relations that govern musical concordance and dissonance, based on scale patterns within the tonal key system.

big-time flake makes important scientific discovery!

While these concepts are the stock and trade of every serious student of music, I’m going to take an immediate historical turn, to garner the insights necessary for unwinding this foul-building plot.

A bit of research on the origins of music theory shows that our Hard Science and New Age obsession over harmonics is admittedly of ancient origins.

The earliest theories of music that have come down to us have come from Ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras.

Pythagoras is famous for giving music theorists the basic concepts for understanding musical scale construction.

He did this by dividing a plucked, resonating string into sections, and comparing the length of each section in relation to other tone pitches. From vibrating string sections, Pythagoras observed divisions that bore fractional relation to one another.

Cumulatively, these vibrating segments came to be known as the harmonic series.

By way of example: pressing down exactly in the middle of a whole string length would produce a tone exactly an octave above the open string. Pythagoras assigned the numerical ratio 2:1 to express this relationship between string division and tone pitch.

The following graphic demonstrates the 2:1, 3:1 and 3:2 monochord ratios, using frequency measurements of Hz, or cycles per second.

The Pythagorean theory, in a nuthsell:

• Every pitch value exists in relation to another. Even a single vibrating open string is expressed as 1:1 ratio.
• Laws govern harmonic relationships, which are to be expressed as numerical ratios.
• The western tradition of tonal harmony developed from the systemization of Pythagoras’ approach.

harmony, meet the sphinx

Fair enough. But where does this take us with regards to our “building vibe” diagnostic quest?

Actually, down the road to a much more ancient doctrine.

What is often overlooked in our understanding of ancient music theory, is that Pythagoras attributed deep mystical value to numbers. His fully articulated doctrine – called Sacred Geometry – was considered an esoteric science for priestly or philosophical initiates only, and it is believed today that Pythagoras inherited and “secularized” this received body of mystical knowledge from Egyptian forebears.

The following video documentary provides some fascinating (if not controversial) background research on the ancient mystery schools from which it is believed Pythagoras derived his initiation (watch from segment 6 onwards for an intro on “The Sacred Science”).

Click here to view the embedded video.

Whatever you make of this type of historical investigation, it should at least be more obvious by now that musicians and sound engineers can claim no exclusivity to the art and science of harmonics. Indeed, following these ancient precepts, music is simply an applied branch in the set of knowledge disciplines that comprise “The Sacred Science”. These disciplines can be listed as follows:

• Chemistry
• Physical sciences
• Philosophy
• Medicine
• Astronomy
• Geometry
• Architecture
• Music
• Mathematics

magic and mystery in central Canada

If all this stuff seems rather far-fetched and esoteric to you, well… you’re right. I mean, there’s a building in Winnipeg which gives me the creeps, and somehow I’m trying to relate my subjective impressions of this building to the mystery schools of Ancient Egypt!

So perhaps I should begin making my point .

One of the reasons people take to learning a music instrument is the ability to express themselves through song and music. Concretely, that means learning to produce harmonious, melodic and rhythmic vibrations with their musical device, in keeping with the stylistic laws of any given musical genre.

In this way, just as I’m instinctively repelled by this building, I am subconsciously attracted to my instrument, knowing it is designed for creative harmonic purposes.

Indeed, if there’s one (flaky) thing we can derive from this “Sacred Science of Geometry”, it is that harmonics are universal. Everybody knows the cliché: “music is the universal language of humankind”. But scientifically speaking even rhythmic devices, such as a single drum resonate with harmonic frequencies.

So in a way, it seems the only difference between us and the ancients is that the ancients thought all things to be imbued with “mystical resonances” (harmonics), from the smallest being in the microcosm to the largest of celestial bodies.

So in effect, what am I doing? I’m just putting on an ancient mask to better sniff out some contemporary bad vibes.

Like Frank Albo, Manitoba’s most recent academic celebrity, now a celebrated architectural harmonics inspector. For those of you who haven’t heard of him, Frank has made a name for himself as expert in local esoteric lore in Winnipeg, with his landmark research on the Freemasonic origins of the Manitoba Legislature.

Here’s a televised segment of Frank doing a “magical mystery tour” of the legislature (apologies for the appalling hipness displayed by the show hosts). Of interest to us: there’s a neat demonstration of architectural harmonics in the final bit of the segment.

and what about glass pyramids?

So in the end, can Frank’s research methods provide me with the key to my local bad vibes diagnostic quest?

Well, if bad industrial design remains the main criteria for determining whether a building has Sick Building Syndrome or not, perhaps flaky musicians such as myself must ultimately have recourse to architectural harmonic assessments, as self-defense against psychically noxious sites.

‘Cause, unless you’ve got that special ear training, you’ll never really know when your local glass pyramid will spontaneously shatter.

(Great West Life glass pyramid, across the road from the Manitoba Legislature.)