The rhythm of life

“In Western societies, the arts tend to occupy a special niche of their own, as if they might be a luxury rather than a vital part of human life. This has made it possible for the unenlightened to argue that music and the other arts are some kind of substitute for, or escape from, ‘real’ life. It is a conclusion with which I profoundly disagree.” Storr

By Melozzo da Forli (1438-1494) [Public domain]

I have read Anthony Storr’s book “Music and the Mind.” Storr loves music and can draw on extensive knowledge and experience, not only as a listener but also as an amateur singer and musician. Apart from that, he is an erudite and a conscientious writer.

You talk about music?

I like listening to music at leisure, without distractions. Before I started working on this blog I have put some familiar music on to drown out the sounds of the street and the neighbours. Storr doubts whether music played in the background can aid concentration, but I find it works for me. If you are interested in matters of music, mind and philosophy you are advised to read his book. Regrettably, not all the music Storr mentions to illustrate his points was immediately familiar to me; it would have been nice if book came with a disk or an mp3-file.

From a philosophical viewpoint the problem with language and music lies very deep:

“…it is impossible for language to exhaust the meaning of music’s world-symbolism, because music refers symbolically to the original contradiction and original pain at the heart of the primordial unity, and thus symbolises a sphere which lies above and beyond all appearance. In relation to that primal being every phenomenon is merely a likeness, which is why language, as the organ and symbol of phenomena, can never, under any circumstances, externalise the innermost depths of music; whenever language attempts to imitate music it only touches the outer surface of music, whereas the deepest meaning of music, for all the eloquence of lyric poetry, can never be brought even one step closer to us.” Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy §6 (I have used the Cambridge Text by Geuss instead of Storr’s quotation)

Do I have to be an experienced listener?

It is not a useless endeavour to talk about music, but there are limits to what we can describe in words. One question that hovers over this book is whether you need experience to listen to music. There is a broad range of listeners: from outstanding composers to people who could only relate classical music to fragments of television commercials. Also, listening to a piece of music that one knows intimately is a completely different experience from hearing it for the first time. Still, all listeners have something in common.

“Music can order our muscular system. I believe that it is also able to order our mental contents.” Storr

It is interesting to see that both Plato and Arisotle looked at music as a powerful instrument of education which could alter the characters of those who studied it, inclining them toward inner order and harmony. For that reason, Plato was in favour of strict censorship to ensure that people would not come into contact with music that would have undesired effects.

Apollo and two Muses, Pompeo Batoni [Public domain]

Music and emotional responses

Everyone would probably agree that music can lead to a state of arousal. Please don’t confuse this with sexual arousal: Arousal is a physiological and psychological state of being awake or reactive to stimuli. Some people argue that what you hear when you listen to music is what the composer has skilfully put in. There is of course a method to a piece of music and there is the composer’s technical skill, but:

” … a word does not mean the same thing to one person as to another; only the tune says the same thing, awakens the same feeling, in both – though that feeling may not be expressed in the same words.” Mendelssohn, in a letter

It is interesting how Mendelssohn hints at something underlying words, maybe underlying feelings. Storr says we need to remember that emotional arousal is partly non-specific; emotions overlap and can change from one feeling to another quite easily. Critics don’t agree when it comes to the feelings they experience when listening to the same music. But there might be something much bigger going on.

“Music activates tendencies, inhibits them, and provides meaningful and relevant resolutions.” Leonard Meyer

Schopenhauer and music

Musicians sometimes experience feelings of being ‘taken over’ or ‘possessed’ during a performance. Composer Alexander Goehr describes how:

“There is no longer a composer who pushes the material about, but only its servant, carrying out what the notes themselves imply. This is the exact experience I seek and which justifies all else.”

Schopenhauer writes how music is an independent art (…) the most powerful of all the arts, and therefore attains its ends entirely from its own resources.

As Storr describes it, both Kant and Schopenhauer believed that there is an underlying reality that is inaccessible to us. Schopenhauer says there is a specific kind of experience that can bring us closer to this reality; when we look at our hand, we can see it as a hand that is the same as anybody else’s, but at the same time, we have a private, subjective knowledge of it. This inside knowledge gives us our only glimpse of the true nature of reality. It brings us closer to the driving force behind everything in the universe: the Will.

According to Schopenhauer, the action of the body is nothing but the act of will objectified.

When we look at Schopenhauer and music, it is important to realise that he was a pessimist. Art was a means to be taken out of oneself, to forget oneself as an individual.

“There always lies so near to us a realm in which we have escaped entirely from all our affliction; but who has the strength to remain in it for long?”

In Schopenhauer’s view music is different from all the other arts because it speaks to us direct. It is a copy of the Will itself. Schopenhauer wished to abolish willing and striving, to avoid arousal, to purge oneself of desire. Storr describes this as life-denying rather than life-enhancing.

A lady playing the spinet, Carl Holsøe [Public domain]

Storr mentions how Schopenhauer finds music has a more direct, profound and immediate effect on us than the other arts, but is not completely satisfied with his explanation of the phenomena.

“Schopenhauer failed to make explicit the relation of music with physical movement, although he perceived both as more directly connected with the Will than other human activities.” Storr

In doing so, Schopenhauer might have missed out on an opportunity to experience music as life-enhancing rather than escapist.

Nietzsche

Nietzsche’s more positive attitude to life was reflected in his treatment of music, says Storr.

“Art and nothing but art! It is the great means of making life possible, the great seduction to life, the great stimulant of life.” Nietzsche

For Nietzsche, music was not a transient pleasure. He attributed such significance to music that he was closer to the ancient Greeks than to most modern thinkers.

Storr concludes that: “both Schopenhauer and Nietzsche were profoundly aware of the horrors of existence. But, where Schopenhauer conceived art as being a refuge, a realm into which a man could temporarily escape from the dissatisfactions of life into a state of contemplation, Nietzsche viewed it as something which could reconcile us with life rather than detach us from it. Because of art, we need not negate the will. Nietzsche believed it was the weak who followed Schopenhauer by denying life: the strong affirm it by creating beauty.”

There is much more to be said about music, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. I am not going to do it, right now. I would like to thank Tongue Sandwich™ for suggesting I read “Music and the Mind”. Readers interested in Nietzsche might look up his article.

Is this for real?

I started blogging as an experiment in writing. The anonymity appealed to me. Contrary to my expectations, I have since found that I might be even more real as a blogger than I am as an off-line person. I want to explore what’s going on.

“You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts.” Kahlil Gibran

Félix Vallotton, Les Alyscamps, soleil, matin [Public domain]

Sceptic

I had no important message to deliver when I started. I decided I would start blogging from the perspective of a sceptic. That might not have been one of my best ideas.

“One response has been the cultural rise of the radicalised rationalists: celebrity atheists who have written bestselling books and sponsored anti-God advertising on the sides of London buses; groups of self-declared ‘Skeptics’ who toured sold-out concert venues like rock stars, defining themselves in opposition to the kind of anti-scientific thinking that they declared dangerous. Everyone of these people, convinced they are right. None of them convincing the other.” Will Storr “the Heretics”

Does this mean I have to change my name?  I don’t think so. I can still live up to the lively part and, contrary to popular belief, there are different kinds of sceptics. As I have described elsewhere, Pyrrhonism is a way to be sceptical by suspending judgment. Scepticism at its best could be a questioning attitude towards knowledge, facts, opinions and beliefs. At its worst it is selective: when you apply it only to things you dislike.

“Scepticism goes back; it attempts to unsettle what has already been settled.” G.K. Chesterton

Comments are invited

While I really appreciate the quality and the friendly tone of most of the comments I get, I sometimes wonder if people simply choose not to comment when they don’t agree with what I write. I know I have done this myself: upon reading something that started promising but reached a conclusion that made me cringe, I have often tiptoed out, instead of speaking out.

By Ferdinand Knab (1834–1902) Das Schlossportal [Public domain]

The danger presented by this welcome sense of community is twofold: it’s easy to stay within a comfort zone and enjoy it. And before I know it, I will keep the interests of some of the people in that group in mind when writing. That is not exactly the way to live dangerously, is it? Where is the experiment in that?

“In real life, true pleasure is usually a by-product of hard work and discomfort.” David Foster Wallace

Have you met Livelysceptic?

I am congruent with Livelysceptic, but Livelysceptic is not all there is to me. Since most of my readers are bloggers themselves, the same goes for all of us. Online, I am a bit like coffee extract: you have to dilute it before you can drink it. It’s hard to express nuances in a short comment and a blogpost needs to draw attention to itself; expressing strong opinions makes this easy.

Something else that is curiously lacking are shared experiences. What do we have in common? When I wake up, you may have been at work for hours or the leaves may turn brown where you are when it’s a cold but flowery spring out here. When I meet someone off-line, we usually spend more time tuning in to each other before we move on to the important part of the conversation.

By August Neven du Mont (1866–1909) Cap Martin [Public domain]

I am surprised at how I have changed in three months. Much more than I probably would have if I had never started blogging. Not even the few things I mentioned on my About-page when I started, were accurate anymore.

To learn by writing.

I have stayed true to my original aim, to learn by writing. I have found I have much more to learn than to say, but it has still been a delight to work on expressing myself in English. Meanwhile, my appreciation for opinions, (my own as well as other people’s) has hit an all-time low:

“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” Oscar Wilde

It’s not an incident that quotes are used so heavily in the bloggosphere. I prefer to read a personal take on reality, between the words of others. No matter if it’s less eloquent than what is already out there. There is of course one creative way to deal with my favourite opinions: to write an anti-post. Surprise yourself and others! Engage with the enemy!

Poetry

Creative writing is intensely personal and at the same time not necessarily true. A good story has to be in accordance with a mythic past and an unknown future and cannot be weighed down by our every-day take on reality. I have found this kind of writing much more demanding than blogging on topic. It invites fewer comments, but I am not going to give up on it.

Ilya Repin, Bridge in Abramtsevo [Public domain]

 

“The truth will set you free, but not until it’s finished with you.” David Foster Wallace

Poetic Justice?

I have a cousin who is about 20 years old. I have watched him grow up, so he embodies the future to me. I have been wondering about the quality of that future ever since he started school.

“The cult of stupidity has become in England what the cult of celebrity is in the United States” Theodore Dalrymple

My cousin does not read books for work or pleasure. When I recently told him of my surprise in finding a yellow-headed cartoon figure when I was looking for Homer, he gazed at me with a patience that finally mirrored my own. I guess he’s all grown up, now.

Homer and Menander [public domain]

education by television

When he first went to school, I noticed he was tired when he came home. He seemed pretty eager to forget all about his day. After dinner, we watched television together. I had taped a few documentaries and we looked at planets and stars, at dinosaurs and pyramids. Especially when the clock ticked past his bedtime, he asked me loads of questions. Some of them were quite difficult to answer.

dyslexia

“One can tell merely by the way these youths handle a pen or a book that they are unfamiliar with these instruments” Dalrymple

At school, he was tested for dyslexia and from that moment on he believed himself to be irreparably stupid. School has taught him nothing is worth knowing or remembering because everything is relative . It is subject to change and can be found in Wikipedia. Each person’s opinion is worth exactly as much as everyone else’s opinion in a democracy.

“Thus are the young condemned to live in an eternal present, a present which merely exists, without connection to a past which might explain it or to a future which might develop from it. Theirs is truly a life of one damned thing after another.” Dalrymple

In his last year at primary school, my cousin did surprisingly well on his test. He was still advised to start at the lowest rung of the educational ladder. That way, the school would receive twice the funding and he would learn less than half of what he was capable of. After four years most of his classmates were unable to name the dates for the First or the Second World War. Or count their change when buying a bag of crisps.

By Becky Sullivan [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creative commons .org/licenses/by/2.0)]

They had no sense of culture beyond Ke$ha, and they could not read or write any words that consisted of three syllables or more. They had only their smartphones to guide them towards the nearest dole queue.

“The future is already here. It’s just not evenly distributed.” William Gibson

While my cousin went on to get some vocational training, another 16-year-old schoolboy found a creative way to express what he had learned so far. He walked up to his teacher in the busy cafeteria and shot him dead.

“Authority of any kind is experienced as an insult to the self, and must therefore be challenged. The world is thus a world of permanently inflamed egos, trying to impose their will on one another.” Dalrymple

Afterwards, the quality of education was not discussed. Journalists went to interview his school friends and dutifully filmed them saying the teacher had it coming. Nothing was challenged and nothing changed.

“The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.” Gloria Steinem

Theodore Dalrymple’s book “Life at the bottom” was helpful to see this as more than a personal story. Many of his articles are reprinted here.

With thanks to David Yerle for making it crystal clear that Einstein’s Theory of Relativity has nothing to do with ‘everything being relative’ (click the link to see the article).

And with thanks to Johannes Nelson for explaining all about Ke$ha in his helpful article (click the link if you would like to read an in-depth analysis of what this singer is all about, textually).

The Muse and the unknown

The moment has arrived when I am to write a post. An hour ago, there was nothing I could think of, so I went for a walk first. Even though it was early morning, there was a distinct weariness to this particular day. The pink spring blossoms were wet and weighing down the branches. They seemed overabundant and unattractive. The air was heavily scented but smelled like a warning, not like something that draws you near. Birds were singing dutifully, like their little, fluttering hearts were not in it. Isolated drops of rain fell down as if saying: “Don’t blame us: we’re only doing our job”.

Spring tree blossom, by Kim Rose [Public domain]

Then, there were people. Women who looked as if they were jogging to keep their figure and hating it every step of the way. Pushing themselves forward with strained jaws and clenched fists. Their heads far ahead of their bodies. Men were sat in cars, hurried already while the day was still young. School children were suffering from the unstoppable energy of puberty in addition to an early morning tinned caffeinated drink. Three of them were coming up behind me, noisy in a way that did not sound completely playful. Not in the least impressed, it was that kind of morning, I waited for them to come near, turned around and looked at them in a way that made the noise level drop considerably. Nothing else was needed. As if even that became pointless, too soon. They steered their bikes around me and picked up speed to get out of my way.

I walked on and found I still did not know.

Steve F [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)%5D

There are many types of knowing. From the superficial way we save time in the supermarket by picking familiar stuff off the shelves, to knowing a complicated machine in a sense that enables us to take it apart and put it back together. We can know things by relying on past experience. We can, when confronted, suddenly find out we know. We can have all the answers. Or think we have them, long after the opportunity to speak out has passed. We can know how to write poetry, from a source deep inside ourselves that connects us to both past and future.

“The female poet has to be her own muse, or she is nothing.” Robert Graves

What if nothing is all that springs to mind?

Originally, the Muses were goddesses, daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory. They were the source of knowledge, both in science and the arts. Hesiod invokes them at the beginning of his Theogony. (Written between 750 and 650 BCE.)

“From the Heliconian Muses let us begin to sing, who hold the great and holy mount of Helicon, and dance on soft feet about the deep-blue spring and the altar of the almighty son of Cronos, and, when they have washed their tender bodies in Permessus or in the Horse’s Spring or Olmeius, make their fair, lovely dances upon highest Helicon and move with vigorous feet.”

Hesiod goes on to say the Muses gave him a laurel shoot and breathed into him a divine voice to celebrate things that shall be and things that were there aforetime.

For many poets, it was custom to sing of the Muses both first and last, whenever they recited in public.

It’s interesting how Hesiod describes the Muses breathing into him, because these days, positive inspiration by the Muse may depend on her silence and passivity, and at times her unwillingness to respond or even listen. The male poet might create great art just to get her attention. The female poet who told me this calls it a fertile silence, but adds the Muse could be dead and inspire still, for the Goddess abides.

Landscape with Apollo and the Muses, by Claude Lorrain (Claude Gellée) 1600/1605 (French)
[public domain]

Not so easy for the female poet to invoke a Muse:

“Out here I feel more helpless

with you than without you” Adrienne Rich

I generally like the not-knowing, but this morning, there were no signs of childlike curiosity or sweet anticipation. I looked at all the people going somewhere in a hurry. At the dogs finding themselves on a leash with hardly enough time to create a decent turd and upon looking, I realised I was still free. Not in any detached, lofty, zenlike contemplation of nature, but free in a sense that there was nowhere else I needed to be right now. Free in the sense of being unchained though the tepid rain did not spare me, nor did the obnoxious smells and sounds. Nature was in mid-struggle, both inside me and all around me, whether I cared to look at it or not.

“Whether or not we find what we are seeking,

Is idle, biologically speaking.” Edna St. Vincent Millay

Comments are invited.

Stargazing

Yesterday, I saw a television documentary about Richard Feynman. At the very end, his sister describes him, lying in a hospital bed, dying of cancer. She saw him gesturing with his hands and the nurse said: “He is making involuntary movements, he is unconscious.”

Human hands, by Luisfi [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D

But his sister knew him very well and she described how he made the movements of a magician, preparing for a trick. He was looking upon the moment of his own death with curiosity.

So, who was this guy?

Feynman has said so many quotable things that it would be easy to refer the reader to those and leave it at that. But I am the one blogging here, so I have made some choices. I will let him introduce himself:

“On the infrequent occasions when I have been called upon in a formal place to play the bongo drums, the introducer never seems to find it necessary to mention that I also do theoretical physics.”

Statement after an introduction mentioning that he played bongo drums, when lecturing at Cornell University.

Feynman diagrams

Feynman was a physicist, he worked at Los Alamos when he was very young and he worked on quantum electrodynamics (QED) and many other questions when he was older. He received a physics Nobel in 1965. I remember seeing a picture of a Feynman diagram on David Yerle’s excellent science blog. Please go there at once before you even think I am going to tell you anything interesting about physics! (And then you may come back here to look at the stars.)

Feynman Diagram, by Persino [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D

In the documentary, Feynman’s daughter recalls how they had the diagrams painted on the family car. People used to interpret the images as examples of Indian art, until one guy stopped them at Mac Donald’s and asked: “Why is your car covered in Feynman diagrams?” Feynman’s wife said: “Because we are the Feynmans.”

science and art

Feynman was genuinely interested in visual arts and music. He traded physics lessons for art lessons with an artist he knew and he was seen in a strip bar drawing naked ladies and scribbling mathematical equations on a napkin.

He asked: “Can a scientist really enjoy the beauty of a flower?” and answered in the affirmative.

“Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars — mere globs of gas atoms. Nothing is “mere”. I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination — stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light. A vast pattern — of which I am a part. What is the pattern or the meaning or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little more about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artist of the past imagined it. Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?”

NASA, ESA, and Erich Karkoschka (University of Arizona) (NASA)

I have looked at this quote and I wholeheartedly agree with the question that is asked of today’s poets. Still, I cannot help but think the Ancients knew the stars in ways that were more intimate than we do now, and not only because to them they seemed to be much closer.

I have been to the Atacama desert (Chile) and looked at the stars from my sleeping bag and I have sat on a wooden fishing boat in Thailand and seen the stars come out in the darkening sky. And though I am amazed by NASA’s pictures, I would sooner equate my personal experience on those occasions to Van Gogh’s Starry Night.

Vincent van Gogh, Starry Night [public domain]

However, it may be possible that I think of this particular painting because it is so close to what I see when I look at the stars with naked eyes: that is, without my glasses. On a more serious note: I do believe it is possible that an artist translates, rephrases the mysteries of nature in a way that we can understand on an emotional level. Bridging the lightyears-wide gap that science has put between the stars and ourselves.

“For far more marvelous is the truth than any artist of the past imagined it.”

Feynman said this, but should we believe it? What is the nature of scientific truth? What do you think?

Maybe the most important thing Feynman did was pointing out again and again that we are never far removed from the great mysteries of life when we do science. And that science resembles art in that respect.

“What I cannot create, I do not understand.”

Written on his blackboard at the time of his death in 1988.

QED

Artistic freedom and donkeys

You have probably never heard of  ”the donkey-trial“.  It’s a Dutch court case against one of the most famous literary writers in the country: Gerard Reve. He was accused of blasphemy for picturing god as a one-year-old donkey and having sex with him three times. Yes, this happened in a book.

By Håkan Dahlström from Helsingborg, Sweden (Donkey ears) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)%5D

who is Reve?

Gerard Reve wrote his first book, “The Evenings” in 1947. It’s an account of the oppressive environment of the Dutch lower-middle-classes in the postwar years. It caused a storm of criticism and is still widely read today. Reve commented:

“I wrote “The evenings” because I was convinced I had to write it: that seems to me a good enough reason. I hoped that ten of my friends would accept a free copy, and that twenty people would buy the book out of pity and ten others by mistake. Things turned out differently. It’s not my fault that it caused such an uproar.”

Reve was born into a Communist family and became openly homosexual long before this was fashionable. He was noted for his use of language inspired by the Bible. For instance, when he altered I Corinthians 13:13 “And now abided faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.” to:

“Sex, Drink and Death, these three, but the greatest of these is Death.”

According to a literary critic, Reve’s characters turn to God, and they do so in a tone suggesting equality between god and man. God needs us as much as we need Him. In a poem:

“But sometimes, when I think that You do truly live 

I think that You are love, and lonely  

and that, in selfsame desperation, You seek me 

as I seek You.”

Nearer to Thee

This poem was taken from the Epilogue of “Nearer to Thee”. The very book that got him into trouble when he described how God assumed the shape of a “one-year-old, mouse-grey donkey” who submits a full three times to the sexual advances of the protagonist.

Reve family ca. 1929 [public domain]

Representatives of the Dutch Reformed Church filed a complaint for blasphemy, even though the author mentioned how this donkey was the ‘dearest, most innocent creature he could think of’.

In 1966 Reve went to court. He was convicted on Article 147 that threatened anyone who publicly, orally or in writing or depiction, offends religious feelings by scornful blasphemy with either a fine or up to three months in prison. In 1968 he went back and defended himself in a brilliant address that showed he had as little respect for the bench as his characters did for the Supreme Being. He was acquitted and he converted to Catholicism that same year, a decision that did not exactly make him popular with the progressive intellectuals that had supported him throughout the court case. On the other hand, the Mother Church must have felt embarrassed at times for having a staunch supporter who was openly gay. Reve continued to write books and letters, saying that the essence of art is ‘overcoming and containing chaos’.

after the trial

The reverberations of the Donkey Trial were felt long after it happened. No one was permanently convicted of scornful blasphemy since 1960, and many critics wondered if this could ever happen, based on such a weird combination of words, but the law was only repealed in 2012, after the christian Minister of Justice failed in his attempt to incorporate even more gods that could be blasphemed against.

Gabriël Metsu, Triumph of Justice (1655-1660) [Public domain]

The most important outcome of the court case was that Reve had managed to make the judges look ridiculous. Like asses, you might say. As his defence, he pictured the way he saw god and compared it to the wrathful, unfathomable petty tyrant his opponents believed in and that made people refrain from future attempts to challenge a literary writer in this way.

today’s artistic freedom

As I mentioned before, there was hardly an intellectual to be found in the 1960′s who would not support Reve in the donkey-trial. But times have changed. I have checked PEN’s report on writers and journalists who have disappeared, been imprisoned or killed in July-December 2012 and the Netherlands were not mentioned. That is the good news.

I want to dig a bit deeper than that and look at PEN’s objective:

“We campaign for freedom of expression and to uphold literature as a force of world culture at the same time. We don’t believe it is possible to have a vibrant literary culture without freedom of expression: the two go hand in hand.”

Admittedly, the person who wrote this lacks historical perspective. The Samizdat literary culture in Communist Russia was a lot more vibrant than anything that goes on there today, but that is beside the point.

Today’s intellectuals

There is no censorship in the Netherlands today and there are no literary writers in prison. Instead, there is evidence of self-censorship and there are endless debates by intellectuals who envisage themselves as protecting the rights of people who demand not to be offended. These people seem to think their religious beliefs should be actively defended by the State and the courts. Left-wing politicians have made a complete about-turn on this issue. They now seem to feel it is their duty to protect cultural minorities from being confronted with any words or images that might challenge the belief that most of them are brought up never to question.

By Dragfyre (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D

Never mind the fact that just about the whole Dutch literary tradition after WW II consists of writers who are violently coming to terms with their religious upbringing in the Reformed Dutch Church. Whatever happened to religion being das Opium des Volkes?

“Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” Karl Marx

The debate is constantly muddled by attacks on the supposed polemic tone. The fact that today’s Reve would simply not find a reputable publisher for “Nearer to Thee”, especially if he had referred to his donkey god from a non-Christian perspective, is overlooked.

In an interesting conference paper about the literary writer as a public intellectual in the Netherlands, making a comparison between the 1960′s and now, the author argues that becoming celebrities has caused a crisis of identity for modern literary writers. The ideal public intellectual (public as opposed to scholarly) should practice detachment.

“Detachment means alienation, being an outsider, a misfit, a non-conformist. However, it is by virtue of this detachment that the public intellectual is able to see and analyze and to speak the truth to society.” Heynders.

Those were the days…

Jump into the river

In this blog, I want to explore the difference between meditating on the river bank and jumping into the river of life.

Jonathan’s Run Falls, by Hubert Stoffels from Pittsburgh, USA

an old friend

I went for a walk with an old friend. Actually she has not been my friend for very long, but no one can deny she is an older woman. When we first met, the look in her eyes made quite an impression on me. I told myself she had perfected this inquisitive look because she was a doctor, but I have found there is more to it than that. Her eyes spoke of a perfect willingness to see what is there, however ugly it might be.

I told her about my experiences with Nietzsche. She was familiar with the concept of amor fati and she thought it was great news. “I can see you doing that,” she said. “I would urge you to go on with it.” But of herself, she said: “I think I can find the things you mention in zen.”

zen

So we explored zen, together. She told me that she could easily relate to the Asian vocabulary that is used by zen practitioners. And to the Asian cultural outlook. (I will not specify what I mean by that. As many of you know Zen has Chinese and Japanese roots and if you compare it to Western philosophy, you will notice an all-pervading Asian flavour.)

By 松岡明芳 (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D

I have lived in Asia with an Asian partner and at the time I totally immersed myself in that. Ever since, there is this occasional Heimweh related to Asian foods and smells. I learned a lot about good manners, I became more dignified in a way, but I never managed to become anything like an Asian woman.

emotional

Looking back at my adventures, I would say my sanguine temperament was my main problem.

“You have a lot of feelings, don’t you?” my old friend asked.

“Yes,” I said. “I do.”

Ever since being very young, I have somehow felt there was too much of me. Too many feelings, too much energy and way too many questions.

I told my friend how I had struggled with my intense experiences. First by trying to wear myself out to reach a state of relaxation. I even stayed up nights just to feel the joys of being tired instead of being ravenously hungry for knowledge and sensations. Next, I tried to hide my feelings because I thought that was needed to become a stable person. I found they festered and soured me. I then looked for other people to provide the discipline I seemed to lack. Living with my army-sergeant partner sapped my energy so much that I started to feel positively meek. It was not a happy feeling.

meditation

In the end, meditation was helpful in finding a new way to deal with the turmoil in my head. For the first time, I realised I could experience feelings as bodily sensations. Nothing more.

I realised I still had a choice on whether I should act on them.

This was a very important insight for me. I still use it on a daily basis.

I went to live in a zen monastery to find out more. And I adapted. My being there was appreciated by the other women. They were genuinely surprised about me having all these thoughts and feelings. My experience of life was not at all familiar to them.

By SeaWiFS Project, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, and ORBIMAGE

I picture the nuns sitting on a riverbank, in a half-lotus. They are forever practicing zen, sitting straight but still, letting their breath flow and the sensations go right through them. The gurgling and bubbling of the water, the gentle wind on their cheeks, the shriek of a passing bird. To sit there, not even being a sounding board. Patiently working to take the self out of the equation.

a memory

One of my schoolteachers has this fond memory of me. We were going on a school camp and we got lost. We were all on our bikes, riding on the beach, when the wind started blowing and the rain came gushing down. The combination of the leaden sky in a sulphur yellow light and the foaming sea waters got some children scared. Others complained they were cold and hungry. Some wanted their mothers. The teacher did his best to keep us all together and hurry us along because he knew things would get worse after dark. He finally reached the front of the group and there I was, pedalling away. Tangled wet hair blowing in all directions, leaning back on the saddle and throwing one arm into the air from sheer enthusiasm. I was completely in the moment. Never noticed him at all. Right before that, there had been a little voice in my head that said:

“I never knew you could do this! I am riding my bike on the beach in a thunderstorm. Wind is raging so much I could not shout if I tried. Getting completely soaked. It’s like flying!”

I can easily accept zen being the answer for my friend. In fact, I can see how it makes a difference for her. But I tried zen as a means to get to know reality. Zen promised me the moon, instead of fingers pointing at it. These days, I think the moon, as seen by me, from the earth, is really all that matters. So I have come to the end of my personal path in zen.

In answer to a question asked by bloggingisaspresponsibility.

Comments are invited and there is no need to agree with me on anything I said.