A Christmas Wish

If I could make one wish for the world this Christmas, I would not wish away pain, suffering or distress - rather, I would wish away greed, insecurity and doubt.
I would wish that everyone could find meaning in their lives, and throu that acquire a positive and compassionate attitude.
I would wish that everyone could see throu the delusions of wealth and glamour, and see that personal authenticity is the only goal worth pursuing.
I would wish that people would realise that emotional awareness is of greater benefit to humanity than any technical accomplishment.
I would wish that that those who aim to inspire change would realise that the only person they need to change is themselves, and that if they could accomplish that everything they desire would follow as day follows night.
I would wish that love would be born anew in each heart and become each person's inner guide.

Vers Libéré

At best, poetry resonates with spirit,
evoking joyful recognition of feelings –
the poem’s individual voice a balance of
subject, poet and otherness – the sweet spot
for each to find by personal attunement.

These days, distrustful of all non-material meanings,
we no longer call that otherness God;
yet the endurance of certain poetry stands
as witness to individual triangulation:
where intunity and intensity couple
producing a truly authentic timbre of voice.

Subject, poet, otherness = the sweet spot.
Were I to shout this, I'd immediately burst
the membrane of truth holding it together.
We might call it the prayer of the unconscious –
the yeast by which matter transmutates to spirit –
a private worship of the tao, an honouring
of living springs which flows in every heartspace,
connecting aquifers and the greater river.

I would not know this, had I not voluntarily
entered the wilderness 20 years ago.
Well, no, perhaps not voluntarily!
A dynamic entered my life from a single dream
creating a constant innergy that led me
off life’s oily, dusty, noisy highway.

Entering a room without artificial light requires
time for the eye to adjust to the natural darkness –
allowing a natural sense of wonder to form
wherein we hold a numinous communion:
observer :: observed :: and the harmonic of observation.

If I were to tell you the figure who appeared in this dream
it would immediately puncture the image you’ve drawn
by localizing it to the physical world.
The way I honour my iconic figure in art
is to distil the quintessence of what I'm shown:
presenting it now as poetry, now as music …

a metaphysical representation of spirit
innergising, throu my own unconscious,
the calling home – the calling to evolve –
the calling to be present :: grounded and yet
illuminated by the numinous.
16/09/2009

What do you need when you've got what you want?

I was feeling a bit glum, having just composed some rather beautiful music and being unable to see how to get it taken up, when my inner voice spoke: “This is what you wanted – to become fully conscious of your own voice & truth. Now you've achieved it, you're complaining that it isn't enough.”
So I responded, then what's the next step? To which the answer was “Wait & see!”

Information & Innergy

I was thinking just recently how profound the word in-form is. If we're looking for a word tha expresses spontaneous auto-generated form then 'in-formed' is ideal. Yet the word has lost that meaning entirely. To say that you will keep someone informed is to suggest you will send them something that may or may not be relevant to them. The very last thing in-form-ation implies is valuable content that could alter someone's mental makeup. Yet to allow yourself to be in-formed by an idea is a wonderful image.

Another new word we might adopt is innergy. I was struck by its possibilities when I heard an American speak about energy. But innergy really expresses what energy is in a personal sense

For Jonathan Harvey

When we think we come to the end of things,
in fact we arrive only at a new beginning.

Nowhere is this more true than in death
where altered reality begins with a final breath.

The arc of life inexorably leads
to this. But in learning pure intention seeds

of change are sown, producing a certainty
of our end point yielding to infinity –

a continuum with altered state where love
is the medium of existence, valued above

all other virtues. The greatest aspiration
simply to join this background radiation,

becoming a chorister in the eternal OM
that honours Life’s enigma: whose final sum

exceeds the logic of its constituent parts
by the measure hope expands each heart.

Where, in golden seam so deeply mined,
beyond what seems lies clarity of mind.

Thus in an old beginning, forever new,
we strive to recover what we always knew.

This ambiguity can art alone make real
and show each generation how to feel

reflexions not just of subjective truth
but waters of eternal life and youth.

Imagination

Most people can't imagine what doesn't exist. Those who can are destined to be tormented by the difference.

Fortress of Illusion

I recently completed the first piece of instrumental music which really expresses what I feel myself capable of. I wanted to write an orchestral piece, but realised that my chances of a performance were not high, so I decided to write it for two pianos instead. What is now the final movement was written first - which arose from experimenting with a perfect canon, and came q easily. I then decided to add an opening movement. It's called Crossing the Desert. That was a tremendous journey for me, where I encountered exactly the kind of attempts to derail my motivation that occur in the story I was illustrating. Altho I threw up my hands in despair many times, I returned and managed to wrestle it to a conclusion. which gave me a great feeling of self-worth.

Spring Awakening

Up early this morning to walk dogs in the exquisite morning light. An errand took me near fields above a hanging wood above Chicksgrove I once visited a lot.
While the dogs scuttled about I was sadly reminded of a poem I wrote 10 years ago. Poor old Lakshme, now 14, runs about gamely, but has a slightly dicky back leg - tho it seems to grow stronger the longer she exercises.

But my reason for writing these reflexions here is that I stood for ages listening to the birdsong in the holly trees set around the edge of the hill like a fortress. At first I kept decoding their song into notation, quantizing it into an octave, because that's the way the mind /literacy works; but then I began to simply listen to the energy in it as praise, rejoicing in nothing more than being alive.

I felt tremendously sorry for people who cannot see the metaphysical coherence of creation, cannot see how this bird is unconsciously honouring the life-spirit in all matter, the same way that your or I do with our conscious intention.
It made me reflect that the tiresome words about God & Christ & Mohammed or whoever are mere quantizations in the infinite octave of reality. We humans must approximate these hugely entities into our little linguistic semitones because of the paucity of moral capacity to comprehend the vastness of the energy available to us.

The Luminous Darkness

Into the echoing darkness I make my prayer,
knowing the dark itself is unanswerable.
All learned behaviour here’s unserviceable:
nakedness alone reveals what’s there.

The darkness that surrounds us is the fear
of ultimate non-existence: thus like child
with candle challenging the west wind wild
we can be nothing other than what appears.

Each black sun is a time of revelation
wherein we touch primordial power: the night
where, after wrestling with angels, light
brings permanent scarring bound up with transformation.

It's not enough to glimpse this mighty force,
we have to clasp its alienation
and wrestle with the pain of penetration
until we integrate the altered discourse.

Only afterwards we see the gift:
the pain arising from tectonic pressure
as old perspectives die to yield a fresher
deeper, larger, more abundant heart shift.

Gong

The chinese word means 'true tone' and denotes a sound whose authenticity makes it a tonic or grounding note. The issue in life is not merely to find one's authentic note, but to play it at the exact juncture where it fits with the spirit ensemble, and with an appropriate timbre so that it creates an organic whole with the world's gamelan.

Letter to a student

Anyone who follows a creative path knows these times of stress.
    You simply have to trust your inner life dynamic – whatever name you choose to give it – for it is throu these times of stress that you grow and mature spiritually, and ultimately come into your true nature. Suffering comes into our lives because that is the mechanism by which we are changed and deepened as individuals. In the process what we discover is that individually we do not control the bigger picture, but need to collaborate with this ‘inner life dynamic’ in order to reach a position where our impulses, our heredity and the needs of others can combine to create a beneficial interaction. Only when we reach that position can we give fully what others can receive fully.
    Everyone experiences these things, and always has done since the dawn of consciousness. What distinguishes the dedicated artist, and indeed any human committed to their own growth, is their willingness to allow themselves to be transformed by the experience and to incorporate the lessons so that their lives become richer and more multi-dimensional.

New Studio

It's been some time since I posted here, partly because I've been preoccupied getting my new studio finished. The building began by my moving out of my old studio in July, and I finally moved back in on 9th January. It has been tremendously disruptive to getting any creative work done, as there have been continuous interruptions from builders & other tradesmen with legitimate enquiries, & things I've needed to chase up. But now it's all over & I am beginning to inhabit the space ~ and. I hope, to begin a new chapter in my life.