How and when does it occur, and at what precise point? When – precisely – does the soul leaving the body become death. Surely it is rather a succession of transitions.

Observing this moment from the comfort of my bed I see I am rather the light in between.

Death becomes life and the spirit dwells in all of it.

Reblogged from Mezrab: the blog!:

The past year saw great turmoil and change in the Arab world. We saw the fall of the leaders of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, and there’s unrest still in Syria, Bahrain, Yemen and to a lesser extent in many other countries of the region. Mezrab has been working on a video that emphasizes the need to continue and strengthen the struggle by connecting and spreading information in between the countries. The idea isn’t just to watch the video and spread it with your friends and contacts (though that’s a good …

The Mezrab’s new blog is up and running. This cultural feast of a space now has a presence online. A gift for us all, I think. Like it, love it, share it, enjoy it ;D

Dear Wives and Girlfriends, Aunts and cousins, Mothers, Daughters and not forgetting our dearest Grandmothers.

I’d like to thank the men for allowing me to speak on their behalf while I propose this toast to the lassies.

This toast is going to take an unashamedly political tone and I take my cue from no less than Burns himself who in 1792 wrote The Rights of Women:

While Europe’s eye is fix’d on mighty things,
The fate of Empires and the fall of Kings;
While quacks of State must each produce his plan,
And even children lisp the Rights of Man;
Amid this mighty fuss just let me mention,
The Rights of Woman merit some attention.

Burns was writing at a time when the world was in a state of mighty flux. The French were revolting – they’re not so much now but they were revolting then. America was in the first decades of its new democracy, Britain was ruled by the Mad King George III with plots to get him overthrown and in Scotland this was known as the Year of the Sheep when Highlanders from Strathruthsdale drove around 6000 sheep off the land in protest of their declining fortunes and were dealt with by the Black Watch. Many in Scotland were fleeing to America to escape such poverty.

Burns was looking at a world in flux much as we are now. Our own Quacks of state are working out how to solve currency and financial problems. The Enlightenment,, the triumph of rationalism, was was seen as a being victorious over hereditary, feudal powers, is now causing so many problems in the form of bankers’ excess and environmental devastation: the rationalists progress being undermined by an Earth rebelling on the form of climate change, biodiversity collapse and exhausation of resources.

We’re at the apex of several crises, and just as the institutions of man are failing or in a state of rapid transformation, like Burns I feel we’re again being called to look more deeply at the Rights of Woman, and learn from their qualities that seem to hold the answer to so many of our problems today applicable today.

If we are on the brink of economic collapse, or if the economy is no longer to be the ruling guardian of our society, how much better to adopt a sense of community at which women are so adept. And if the environment is really giving way beneath our feet, how much better to adopt the feminine qualities of nurture and care: of each other and of our great Mother the Earth. And if all conventional solutions seem to be failing, how much better to trust an internal sense of rightness, the much famed feminine sense of intuition.

In his poem, Burns named the second right of woman as caution. That a sense of placidness, of peace that women keep should be honoured and respected by men. And men should be thankful that this quality exists because by honouring it, it makes us better men.

And it’s in that spirit I make this toast: that women, having presented a finer way of living than us gruff simple men could imagine for ourselves, need listening to more deeply now than ever.

So I’d like to ask the gentlemen to be upstanding and join in me in raising a glass: “To the Lassies”

A happy missing

Enjoy!

“Poetry comes from a place that no one commands, that no one conquers. So I feel somewhat like a charlatan to accept an award for an activity which I do not command. In other words, if I knew where the good songs came from I would go there more often.” ~ Leonard Cohen

The slow downhill unwinding motion is coming to an end. For the last week I have been seeing friends, attended a wedding, seen Leonardo da Vinci’s paintings and James Yorkston at the Union Chapel.

James Yorkston is a modern folksy man. He tells stories that are funny because he tells them, and they happened to a man with a simple world view. One like your own but slightly squewiff. Musically one or two songs verge on perfect, the rest comfortable and easy, amongst the vaulted, illuminated roof of the Union Chapel sounds ricochet and the audience settle yummily into a folksy daze. The last few have been a cultural gift.

Now I need space. I need to feel my edges again. The last few months have been a riot of dynamic, shifting, articulating, moving and direction finding, relationship forming, vista opening and long-hard-road-to-realise-that walking and the new year promises more.

So I have given myself these weeks to shut off the entrepreneurial spirit and consistent entertainment and be nourished by walks and coffee, family and imagination. The mechanisms to reach and excite and move outwardly are still in full flow and collapsing back into them has a feeling of depression: an accumulated tension or reflex of so much continuous motion and decision making. Relaxing back into this is a welcome breakdown, but a breakdown it is and the psyche acts up at this miracle decline. Resisting the ease of breathing, of being unstimulated. Internet needs to be checked, though nothing is there. Friends need to be called, but the majority won’t come.

Being with my sister is good stability while this happens. The ease of her manner, her face and comfort make it a good time to be in London, sun on solstice day and the warm arms of friends and close family make this my best trip yet to the grey, horrendous city.

Then it’s Christmas in Somerset with the family and after they leave I’ll be spending 5 days in isolation amongst hills. No internet or people, only chickens to feed and myself to take care of. I have Ovid’s Metamorphoses and a backlog of writing to do and will spend New Year’s Eve in the garden, sending out prayers for the year 2012.

(and for the clever, my 2012 post is pre-written, look forward to your reactions on that)

Peace and goodwill,

Simon

To see such a master at work, with perfection of detail and of scope expands your own. Within a few pictures, you are moving more gently, speaking more fluidly and, it feels, seeing more clearly.  An hour in there is a revolution in vision. Hearing, movement, touch and smell equally alerted. And then it cascades: the oceans of meaning of the Virgin on the Rocks, St. Jerome similarly dis-posed, Musician, Christ and remarkable, remarkable Woman.

Walking around is falling in love*. You glimpse, sometimes immediately struck, sometimes held by something you can’t identify seeing and then BLAM: the full force of intricate detail, scope of composition, or sheer exquisite beauty hits /creeps up on/stills you and you’re held, in that moment, with awe that peeling away feels like a tender heart break and so you go again

again

again

there’s another painting, or a sketch where Leonardo has seen something so much deeper than you can and is teaching it to you so you can see

There was a sketch of the head of a bear, beautifully set in a square oak frame. Nestling amongst the master pieces, perhaps my favourite of the sketches.

The queue is by now legendary and arrival at 8.25am (sunrise in Trafalgar Square)  was enough to secure us 300th place in the queue, receive our tickets at 11am and be invited back for 14.30. We (my sister and I) snoozed in a café and headed back invigorated for a treat that the wait could hardly scar.

Choice quotes from fellow goers:

“I don’t know much about art, but I know what I like.”

He really hasn’t done that lion at all well.”

“Reckon I could do that one.” (Man looking at the first sketch. i giggled and it turned out he was serious “…if only I’d started 30 year ago” “Or 600″ I replied)

Most of the rest was spoken in an excited hush.

* Falling in love with a painting can be easier than human beings. Because they do not move. Taking this and bringing it into the world would be a precious thing. I can see why people get obsessed with these things because it’s so much clearer and stays where you put it. Movement belies and undermines, perhaps has more opportunity for depth (or more repeatedly) but…I find it difficult to imagine feeling the same as the Virgin on the Rocks when I meet most people. Though it’s a lovely thing to aim for. There’s also something here about clarity of perception and love being inextricably linked, but I’ve written beyond the intention of this footnote.

I’m loving the way writing and storytelling is a force through which others are allowed to speak. Both create a space for your expression, for your insights to infuse and culminate in something to be taken away and benefit your life. I don’t know where these words come from but they seem to hit a note with different people at different times. Often they don’t seem so relevant to me, and then somone responds: I’m so glad you wrote that. This is probably the greatest joy, to spark a commune-ity of online feeling and being, even if you pass here for a moment and we never see each other again. Even anonymously, it all helps swell this deep sea feeling of those wanting/persuaded to be caressed by words, or lulled into their own deep comfort. A reminder of our hearts so available to rest in.

We’re at such a critical time in our lives. We’re forced to go deeper and engage with those around us, face problems we see blown up large in the small scale in our little existences, and to face these problems in a spirit of play and play until the music stops, and then just keep going because we know no other other.

Here’s to more playing with my blog-friends, as it links seamlessly into our human, real communities: always appreciating your presences, comments and connections made here.

Now for my favourite song of winter:

…or…

The Failure Of So Many Good Intentions

by Simon Hodges

Power and Beauty: A Play by Simon Hodges is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at diaryofanunbornwriter.wordpress.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://diaryofanunbornwriter.wordpress.com/about/.

Cast

Beauty – actor late 20s male/female – has flower in hair

Power – actor late 20s actor male/female – wears armour, has foppish fringe

Beauty and Power are standing onstage. Lines are expressed in continuous exchange. Power speaks first.

Hello Beauty

Hello Power

I want you

I want you as well

Then we should hang out

We should? We shall! I am coming for you tonight. Meet me at 6pm.

That is very daring. I am little swept away by it. It intrigues me in a Pride & Prejudice bosom-heaving way.

Thank you. I make a good Darcy. I am capable. And strong. And sensitive when I have to be. You can rest and be beautiful. I will protect you.

What do you want in return?

For you to be beautiful.

Is that all? Won’t you get tired?

No. I do not tire. I am strong.

You sure? I mean there are plenty of other things I can do. You’ll exhaust yourself. We can make an excellent team.

I agree. You look beautiful, I get stuff done.

I find that patronising.

You wouldn’t if you knew what’s good for you.

Exactly my point.

There’s no need to be smart, or make life difficult. Just lie back.

If I can’t live, I shrivel!

If you want me in command, you will relent.

If I relent you’ll overpower me. I need to be careful. I can’t trust you as I did.

You can.

I disagree.

OK. How about we talk about this over … a trip to Paris!! [he pulls tickets out of his sleeve] We leave at 9pm.

To keep me quiet I suppose?

No, to enjoy. Just come.

No.

Very well. Then I go.

FINE!!!

[Beauty walks to stage right] I feel so let down.

[Power walks to stage left] She turned down Paris !

THE END

At the Storytelling with WordPress workshop at the Hub on Wednesday, our aim was simply to help a group of small businesses get their stories online. The Hub is rich with a collection of adventurous, world-conscious souls who were open to new ideas and where they could lead them. Born out of a collaboration of two Hub members who just met, it was a perfect testing ground for our new ideas to see how they land.

As well as helping participants to gain an online presence, we went through some exercises to get them to understand their story better. This exercise asks business owners to imagine themselves for a variety of perspectives, not only helping them to understand their own situation, but that of their clients and the environment they share. With it business owners are given a wealth of insights to help them understand and empathise with the positions of their stakeholders. This depth is not just understanding, it is also feeling and experiencing as they might feel and experience. The journey gives a much richer base to begin telling their story and the ability to communicate on a deeper level: persuading and attracting clients not simply on a rational basis, but an intuitive, resonant one as well.

The seed ideas for the workshop came from the discipline of design. I do believe that this is one of the most progressive areas of human investigation: not just concentrating on its expansion, but its deepening also. How can we create experiences that give us an insight into what we care about? How can they communicate a sense of who we are?

In a small way, our workshop sought to tread the lofty trails already climbed by design. If it manages to get a few businesses talking more deeply with their clients – that is to say commune-cating – it will have been a job well done.

Here’s my picks:

Your cells are a rhythm of life and their music was given by God to sing. Their chant is that you are free. Freer than the moon and the call of the lone wolf at its base. Their cares are not yours and neither is the silent sun alien from you. There was a voice that called, and in every note could only speak your name.

But could you listen? Is your love deep enough to hear it?

…

[more]

Steve Jobs honoured by Silicon Valley

What is about death that triggers celebration?

Suddenly a bitter rival, however admired, turns into hero in the space of an escaped heartbeat or seven. In life his qualities would be disguised by personal accusations and frustrations. Now these are released.

I hope that we can die a little to each other each day, see all around us in a deeper bloom, and not wait for physical death for that to occur.

PS Yes, I know I promised never to ever say anything about Steve Jobs but he’s the trigger more than the target. I died to my own promise, OK? You know, for possibility.

We’re just getting in the mood

My first word on the death list  is:

Added-value

Notable Culprits: José Baldaia, The Minimalists, the entire design profession.

Beloved of designers and social business entrepreneurs this term isa way to suggest a deeper connection to one’s activity, or an interest in the needs of others. Indeed, by adding value, we are somehow contributing to a higher universal goal.

And what could be wrong with that?

Nothing. Except that a man turned up to a meeting today “to explore ways he could add value to the discussion”. He commoditised himself and became value adding machine.

This is a flip from previous meaning. Value-added used to be a term for economists to refer to activities that were motors of the economy. Technologies counted as value added, productivity and innovation were its hallmarks.

Added-Value, however, connotes a wider sense of contribution, in tune with natural human desires, relevant to the task at hand. Other people value what I do. What I do has value in that it – Note that a value has to exist in a person’s opinion. Nothing has value in itself. It has to be specified. To add value is therefore to create something about which people will have a good opinion. Surely not the hallmark of mavericks and world changers, or those whose creations have had lasting impact.

We use “added value” because we have lost a sense of how to specify what we want and need. And so a cliché is former whose use diminishes each time it is written or spoken.

Picture by author

Walking in edinburgh is like stepping into old shoes that magically become alive. It has not changed a bit. There are new shops in old places and the people I’m meeting somehow fit into the old archetypes. Working freelance is a joy when you can keep on top of work while cycling through Europe’s finest cities.

There is also renewal. Impressions of the town – with its cliffs at the ends of streets set against blue sky, a fresh wind billowing down each – renew along old lines. I am not the same as I was, and while the outlines remain the same, the fillings are fuller full and more mature. People’s lives outgrown past assumptions, learning again in familiar situations.

I can relax in this stone village. I meet several people that I know but did not expect to see and miss many more. This home away from home keeps singing her secrets in so many tunes the undertow of Scottish melancholy and grim sophistication. It’s the laughing sorts who know too much dread. The lines on their faces betray what the cackles and swiftly sunk pints hide. Warmth seeps through every one, as the cold wind blows and blows.

But humanity’s future world is neither material nor spiritual, it is psychic

- Barry Long

Now to apprciate what Barry Long means by psychic requires reading of his excellent, spell-binding and mind-enhancing The Origins of Man and the Universe, written in 1984. In it he reveals and dispells many myths.

By psychic he is referring to humanity’s deep mind, what Jung might call the collective unconscious: the cumulative past of all human – and terrestial – thought and action. Long asserted that we need to face up to this past in its entirity as individuals in order to inherit our full conscious power, able to be responsible for our lives on Earth and make it into the paradise that is its potential. I am filling in a bit but this is the gist (seriously, you should read that book!).

My point today is more innocent and slightly less all-embracing. I am thinking if the number of ideas we are able to process and expected to process a second compared with 15-20 years ago. Many (though not all RGL!) of the older generation find it difficult still to bowl through email at pace, cannot comprehend Twitter or even why people find it amusing. You can also compare an early episode of the Simpsons – slow-paced, obvious – with its more recent output – 7-12 plot lines in a show, a bizillion cultural references. Compare also an episode of Friends with its successor How I Met Your Mother. HIMYM apes Friends in its core concept, but the succession of jokes, cultural references and plot lines is far more intricate and self-revealing than Friends ever was. It also happens to be a lot more funny.

This is a rosy view of television and media, but shows their potential to improve ourselves. The psychological (Long would say psychic) ability to process so many megabits when introverted could be a facility to help make us more aware: of the intricacy and absorption provided by our natural environments.

Does this post make sense? Does it irritate or stimulate you? Let me know below.

In the songwriters’ all-night café Tom Waites sits in a corner wreathed in smoke, surrounded by fellow players, back slapping and cackling to his chords. In another corner, distant but listening is Leonard Cohen, nursing a wine glass and contemplating puzzles he can resolve in lyrics. Stephen Burch, aka The Great Park, belongs in this corner.

The Great Park’s album Now Wash Your Hands mimics Cohen’s melancholy with with a decidedly English tinge. Countrysides unfurl amongst heart-wrung fireside conversations with a force of words that suggests Burch lives a common life, but one that is deeply felt. A minstrel and a storyteller, his songs ripple and lilt along with a beautiful variety of folk cadences, here and there touched up by strings and trumpet.

The themes are loss and anguish but it is not an album of navel-gazing. The quality of his lyrics – a distillation of beautiful thoughts – have enough sincerity to push the at-times-unbearable sentimality to a deeper solace.

This is a writer’s music. Cohen indeed peeks through, most notably on Jake, an atmosphere of songtelling that illuminates scenes of questions half-answered. Stephen in person is a bright, good-humoured man, so whatever anguish he experiences through music, it undoubtedly provides a cure.

It will be interesting to see where The Great Park heads next, if the music he produces becomes more synthesised or heavily accompanied. Wherever he goes, the atmosphere and feeling of this record is a delight for melancholy afternoons that afterwards feel somehow more bright.

Now Wash Your Hands is available on handmade CD and download from Woodland Recordings. The Great Park is touring mainland Europe until February 2012, including Amsterdam and Rotterdam next week. See The Great Park website for dates.

Sitting now writing sliding into peace.

You can have anything you want – he said – reminding me that desire was a sliding phenomenon in a bigger sea where it is already actualised. His talk was a movement into that, so I’m grateful for his words and what he was able to make us do – feel this highest desire and its ephemerality. Ain’t nothing wrong with loving yourself maximally, eh?

That is all I have to day about Law of Attraction.

“Cooking is not only a response to the basic human need of feeding ourselves, and is also more than the search for happiness,” they said. “Cooking is a powerful, transformative tool that, through the joint effort of co-producers – whether we be chefs, producers or eaters – can change the way the world nourishes itself.”

We all have this power. It is not that they are telling everyone how they should be but taking responsibility for their role in the grand scheme. If each individual, business and government does the same quite a revolution would be on our hands.*

The Kogis of Colombia sit their children in caves to learn the teachings for nine years before they see daylight. When they emerge they are continuously supervised by an elder teaching and reminding them of the vast space they inhabit, even when engaged in the tiniest task.

“Look at the loom” says an elder to his student as he weaves, in the documentary From the Heart of the World ”Look at its four corners and how they remind you of the four corners of the Earth”.

We are given the opportunity either to enslave ourselves and our surroundings, or be integrated, responsible and free. And changing our language is a powerful first step.

The Kogis documentary is viewable here, in appalling quality. I highly recommend buying the DVD but if you have no choice, its message is powerful even when pixellated.

*I have done the same for my business Words that Change – its role is to supply visions that inspire, and words that lift the heart.