Resplendent Noise

Dave Lakhani has received a link to an interesting article over at The Washington Post from Ben Mack, and he's generously shared it in his blog at Bold Approach.


Entitled Pearls Before Breakfast, Gene Weingarten, in the April 8th issue, says

"Can one of the nation's great musicians cut through the fog of a D.C. rush hour? Let's find out."

In the article the Post writer documents a social experiment in well-written detail, which was a marvel to behold.

His conclusions are powerful... and instructive. And the article... was a joy to read.

Dave suggested it is a "direct reflection of your audience and the reaction to your performance" - meaning, at least partly, a reference to its lesson for furthering our marketing efforts, I took it.

So, as a marketing noob, of course, I checked it out.

Then I felt compelled to weigh in, to expand the dialog, so to speak - so as to release my inner chatter!

And in case you don't already know, we wannabe writers like to kick this stuff out a lotta times anyway - which is why we live like hermits. :)

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Dear Dave,

My hat's off to you and Ben for sharing this article.

I thoroughly enjoyed receiving the vibe - that's New Age-speak for telling me about the noise!

It's no wonder we tend to tune out noise - even the so-called good noise - as we have so much noise going on inside our own heads... we must necessarily filter out... the competition from outside... to be heard.

The article you and Ben cite is a perfect illustration of this phenomenon.

It seems much of what we employ as influence and persuasion tactics today must be focused on how it is we can appeal to people's finely-tuned sense of self-centeredness and conscious greed - as most of us are hell-bent on getting heard...

... By that selfish inner chatter... which resides within... all of us.

[Bottom line: Hey, it's still only about survival, baby!]

And so people wrapped up in themselves... with their problems... their seeking of everyday pleasure and fulfillment at every turn... is where we often begin.

Especially if our aim is to target them... to illustrate an object lesson... as is the case in the Post article.

However, another way might be to start by realizing this kind of epidemic behavior is actually a good thing... and the way to penetrate this mindset... is to reverse engineer our thoughts... of constantly thinking... in order to make a more valuable and calculating appeal... to this, our common affliction.

Though we instinctively know we must start with emotion and sensory perception, it's not always from a commonality of meaning or purpose.

Then we start to question whether appealing, objectifying, and targeting is really the best strategy in the first place.

So let's consider this beforehand.

"Children accumulate virtually no memory until they have language."

"Consciousness is self-awareness... characterized by language... which facilitates inner narration."

"Consciousness IS language. Like with certain words, images, feelings and perceptions... good music is thought to be useful good noise - as it supposedly emanates from the same natural vibratory impulse as sensory stimulation + conjured immediate thought = emotional desire, followed by the desperate want, then the perceived need to control."

History is replete with examples, ad infinitum, of all the ways we've put into place... and attempted to implement... control over others.

[And I wonder: Will this forever be so critical to our economic survival?]

When communication professionals become accomplished, then sullied by these many infectious words - marketers... admen, public relation, media and brand specialists... propaganda experts - are they put on this earth to zero in on those certain flaws in our human character, so all the others now become our targets?

And these many more others - likely referred to as informed consumers - really do eat up all this attention... because all of us, it turns out, really pine for these... same dirty words!

But we all have our crosses to bear, and someone has to dish out these dirty words we love so much... because burning desire, like for more money, or certain pleasures, has crept up on us all, hasn't it?

Earth + Air + Water + Fire = LIFE

It's part-and-parcel of our capitalist system... and T-I-N-A... THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE (Margaret Thatcher)... still stands as our universally accepted credo.

[Though nothing has fundamentally changed... maybe we can at least be awakened to new possibilities... if it's true our survival hangs in the balance.]

So for the sake of our own amusement, disregarding for a moment all other motivating factors, let's assume we really are brainwashed.

Submitting ourselves... to conscious-driven... incessant... dissonant... inner chatter - right from the get-go!

Have we come to accept this observation to be a part of our basic instinct for survival and self-preservation - as evidenced by our common behavior patterns - to blithely be seen walking around... talking to ourselves?

Isn't this what is characteristic of hapless patients in insane asylums?

[Just wondering... if it's not okay... just say so. But can we be completely honest with ourselves?]

Anyway, without digressing further, let's make a determination.

Do we want to approach this issue as one of war, like what is studied at war colleges, or from what we learned in The Art of War (Sun Tzu)?

Or do we want to try a less aggressive, maybe more feminine, non-judgmental method instead?

Wherein might lie the clue... in our determination... for fresh and bold approach?

Should we tally up all our common emotional and sensory attributes... and begin redeployment? In preparation for another more all-encompassing assault on the senses?

Rather than... just one... of resplendent noise... shown, by example, in the Post's experiment?

Must we also consider bringing on some assorted jugglers, mimes, slapstick comedians, carnival barkers, town criers, unclothed bodies, compelling objets d'art, even free food and drink to add to the mix - just for teasers - in order to gain this promise of requisite attention?

Then tweak and test the mix for desired effect?

[Why the hell not? Sounds like a party to me! Can I come? Can I? Can I?]

Could it be if we stop to unthink... then re-create the conditions for a “stiller” serenity – uncluttered by foolish inner chatter... the falsely-perceived ravages of time... not spent in the here-and-now... and disparate stupid pursuits... always running to-and-fro – we might more easily cause the violinist gainful notice... to get the worthy gentleman... some damn attention please?

Or perhaps we should search for the single common thread of least resistance - at the very least - first?

Mind
Mind-blowing
Mind-boggling
Mind-expanding
Mindful
Mindfulness
Minding
Mindless
Mind reading
Mindset
Mind’s-Eye
Mindshare

For what useful purpose does it serve if we ill-consider empowerment and enrichment, the same energy which allows us all to be present... and so motivated to go on about our busy-ness?

And where might these conditions best be perfected – or exploited?

The public square (in the case of the author’s article you shared, L'Enfant Plaza, near the Metro, in Washington D.C.) – or in individual hearts and minds?

Where does critical thinking, preconceived notions about acculturative value equations, or propaganda fit into this scenario?

Are we not fighting a losing battle?

Have we thoroughly examined our assumptions – or questioned our motives for self-aggrandizement?

And what is the highest, most noble good we can derive from all this, our amusement and our chatter... our exquisite enrichment... and longing for ecstatic experience - even if the meaning of meaning is held over... for another day?

Finally, shouldn't we reconsider... an examination... of thoughtforms... egregores... s'more memes... to further explore?

Then determine if, by their alignment, we can be made to feel more useful... by virtue of our newfound purpose... after that?

Some innocent things... always beggar us for answers...

... Which is why... I'm glad to be... on your mailing list.

I know... like Ben... you entertain these foolish questions too!

All the best,

Lark

[Notes: Perhaps the social experiment described in the Post article would have drawn different conclusions from the author if the musician selected was a viola (more masculine tonality) player instead of a violinist (the violin being higher-pitched, with a more feminine tonality).

A lone youngish professional woman, Stacy Furukawa, was Joshua Bell’s most-attuned and active audience participant - and his best customer. (Is this what the author meant by "... cute elides into hott", an added impetus for Ms. Furukawa to notice his playing?) Near the end of his performance she cheerfully laid down a twenty... into his violin case... amazed by the scene around her!

Previously, John Picarello, "a smallish and baldish man" - and a true classical music fan - took no note of Joshua Bell's celebrity. After watching and listening appreciatively - for nearly ten whole minutes - he tossed a fiver in the case.

This is but one example of how we can learn more about ourselves by performing similar exercises.

See the plot details in Shakespeare’s comedy, Twelfth Night, or What You Will - particularly the antics of Feste, the resident fool! :)]

Tags: Pearls Before Breakfast, Gene Weingarten, Dave Lakhani, Ben Mack, Mark and Lark, Washington Post, Meaning, Language, Music, Commonality of Purpose, Resplendent Noise

After Words: Retracing the Patterns of Language

After reading Language Garden, by Susanne Antonetta, in a past issue of Orion Magazine, I was reminded of one of my early heroes... whose books and articles I had read intensely before I became an adult, in those years from about 1968 to 1975.

Language Garden posits this: An orangutan with attitude meets a writer with a weakness for Shakespeare. And a writer wonders, if we give animals language, do we free them, or imprison them?

The same magazine features archived articles by Jane Goodall, famous for her work with primates, and I knew much research had been done over many years exploring their capacities and abilities to think and communicate like human beings, so I had become transfixed by this question put forth by Ms. Antonetta.

So what if one were to put forth this same question about human beings? How can children be taught ways to adopt language in ways which might improve our species, by their parents improving the methodologies by which they better communicate its meaning to them?

Furthermore, to address the central issue raised in the article, does language actually harm us more than it helps us, or does it follow that perhaps we might need to rethink how it is we indoctrinate our children - with language - to this world?

Adults themselves are already fearful, for instance, of putting their foots in their mouths; and cognitive dissonance - the uncomfortable tension that arises from holding two conflicting thoughts at the same time - in and of itself creates a type of fear.

So fear emanating from unscripted emotion... can only be perpetuated by scary thoughts - themselves borne from our words for them... in language.

An interesting article in Live Science suggests we may already possess the ability to read minds, much like clairvoyants. But what language symbols would we ascribe to whatever it is we read, if indeed this faculty actually exists?

Man had created language in order to attach signs and symbols to bits and scraps of observable phenomena commonly experienced by us the living - presumably so we could communicate in coherent ways - as signs and symbols had seemingly become necessary to his survival... and with them he'd hoped their usefulness might cause him to better adapt - or conform - within the environment he'd found himself.

Heck, our ancestors only wanted the ability to talk to each other! What could be harmful in that?

Our defenseless children needed protection and guidance. And we adults needed protection from fear - the reassurance that by our relative safety in numbers we could ensure our survival... in such a harsh bewildering environment... so full of life's mystery and wonder.

And people today are not so different from people in the Stone Age. We still need to draw from our natural world the same resources other living things need to survive - be it air, water, food or shelter, etcetera. And competition forced all living things into certain collaborative arrangements within this environment, so we could feel safe from our would-be protectors - or our predators - much like today.

[Oh how I love games of irony and wordplay! :)]

Alan Watts understood this conundrum better than most. Which is why I'd decided to select him as one of my mentors. His words resonated more truth than I could read or hear about elsewhere at that time - and I had a voracious appetite...

... For words... and their truthfulness. And for my selfish pursuit of pleasure.

Even after revisiting recently much of what I'd come to appreciate about his teachings - and learning anew so much more about the man in the process - I'm empathetic still.

Which just means I can still relate to his takes on the significance of what he taught me - about language arts - even after learning more about his heroic journey to discover meaning in this life... knowing full well what he'd learned and shared with many others beforehand.

The man was not this scholarly old gentleman - a real life guru, as I had supposed, after all; he was youthful in his spirit. In fact, he was just as flawed as I am. As you are... as we all are.

He was an iconoclast, to be sure. And an autodidactic personality. But he was also a hedonist with an extraordinarily inventive passion for breaking the bonds of conformity... within society's self-imposed boundaries.

It was said he could suck all the oxygen out of any room he entered, and he could go through a bottle of vodka, by himself, in a day. And I imagined he could command attention alright, almost at will, simply by virtue of his presence.

But he also enjoyed casual walks outside his rural compound in northern California, or cavorting in a converted old ferry tethered beside San Francisco Bay... and his time spent in quiet contemplation - contentedly alone with himself. He loved good food... gardens... and nature... women... and architecture... the finer things of what we call living.

And he made me laugh, because he just didn't buy into any convention - especially with his repetitive allusions to boxes and wigglies!

In 1973 he was found dead at his beloved nature retreat, at the commandeered round house called Mandala, having apparently died in his stupor - or his sleep - ravaged from exhaustion... by all his pleasurable [sic] pursuits... at the ripe old age of 58.

Off the top of my head, the books I remember having read by Watts were, if I remember correctly, in this order...

"The Way of Zen" (1957)

"The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing who You Are" (1966)

"Behold the Spirit: A Study in the Necessity of Mystical Religion" (1948)

... But I'm sure I read a whole lot more. What I really remember is I had to read each of these more than once - to make sure I would absorb and hold onto the words they contained.

But then this was a violation of what I'd learned to be true, so I let it all go, just as he had schooled me... like in this essay from The New Alchemy.

In the end though I was mindful that - like these words - they were still... only words.

I but retained what he had learned from D.T.Suzuki, something called the "science of 'no-mind'" - the essence of which is "of no matter" anyway.

Watts was not so judgmental about himself or the world that he needed to subjugate his animal desire for pleasure - wherever it could be found. On the contrary, his intrepid investigation into many of life's curiosities proved he was possessed of a playful spirit... endowed with a noble and towering intellect. A notorious womanizer, the notion that he had to be or act in a certain way - at any given time - would have been to deprive himself of nothing but his freedom... for the cosmic wanderlust... he so craved.

In the mid-60s a term was coined called a "self-destruct trip" - for me, one of those memes which informs undesirable behavior. It'd be a pity today if we were to discard Watts' lessons because of his own obvious self-destruct trip through life...

... Because the example of his personal journey - and what he left behind - can still serve as a wake-up call for us all.

This is the ultimate value I place before the altar of Alan Watts - the theory of everything... can be reconciled... to all that is provable... to be good... in the end.

After words you read and hear are done, here's some more to soak in - before surrendering to their wisdom... as we trust you will.

"I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is."

"I find it a little difficult to say what the subject matter of this seminar is going to be, because it's too fundamental to give it a title. I'm going to talk about what there is. Now the first thing that we have to do is to get our perspectives with some background about the basic ideas that, as Westerners living today in the United States, influence our everyday common sense, our fundamental notions about what life is about. And there are historical origins for this which influence us more strongly than most people realize. Ideas of the world which are built into the very nature of the language we use, and of our ideas of logic, and of what makes sense altogether."

"Some believe all that parents, tutors, and kindred believe. They take their principles by inheritance, and defend them as they would their estates, because they are born heirs to them."

"We are all basically scams and if you haven’t found that — you are very unconscious. I know all sorts of people who are full of outward love, but of course it always turns up that they need money. And where it comes to money, the virtue flies out of a window."

"It is said that playing-cards were devised by the ancients to hide a secret where those not "in the know" would never think of looking for it. For heresy-hunters are serious-minded people who would never think of looking for religion in a game. It is curious to think how men have gambled, fought and slain one another over these unknown symbols, and it is interesting to wonder whether the most accomplished 'poker face' would fall a little on discovering that he was playing for lucre with emblems just as holy as the cross, the chalice and the crown of thorns. Probably not, for men have done things just as terrible in the name of symbols whose holiness they recognized. However, it is no less strange that the puritanic mind should see in diamonds, spades, hearts and clubs the signs of vice, to be avoided at all times and more especially on Sundays."

"The subject of this seminar is "Self and Other," and this is therefore to be an exploration into the subject that interests me most, which is the problem of personal identity, man's relationship to the universe, and all the things that are connected with that. It is for our culture at this time in history an extremely urgent problem, because of our technological power. In known history, nobody has had such capacity for altering the universe than the people of the United States of America, and nobody has gone about it in such an aggressive way."

"The most strongly enforced of all known taboos is the taboo against knowing who or what you really are behind the mask of your apparently separate, independent, and isolated ego."

"Faith is a state of openness or trust. To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don't grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float. And the attitude of faith is the very opposite of clinging to belief, of holding on. In other words, a person who is fanatic in matters of religion, and clings to certain ideas about the nature of God and the universe, becomes a person who has no faith at all. Instead they are holding tight. But the attitude of faith is to let go, and become open to truth, whatever it might turn out to be."

"Inability to accept the mystic experience is more than an intellectual handicap. Lack of awareness of the basic unity of organism and environment is a serious and dangerous hallucination. For in a civilization equipped with immense technological power, the sense of alienation between man and nature leads to the use of technology in a hostile spirit---to the "conquest" of nature instead of intelligent co-operation with nature."

"I find that the sensation of myself as an ego inside a bag of skin is really a hallucination. What we really are is, first of all, the whole of our body. And although our bodies are bounded with skin, and we can differentiate between outside and inside, they cannot exist except in a certain kind of natural environment. Obviously a body requires air, and the air must be within a certain temperature range. The body also requires certain kinds of nutrition. So in order to occur the body must be on a mild and nutritive planet with just enough oxygen in the atmosphere spinning regularly around in a harmonious and rhythmical way near a certain kind of warm star."

"That arrangement is just as essential to the existence of my body as my heart, my lungs, and my brain. So to describe myself in a scientific way, I must also describe my surroundings, which is a clumsy way [of] getting around to the realization that you are the entire universe. However we do not normally feel that way because we have constructed in thought an abstract idea of our self."

"Can any melting or burning imaginable get rid of these ever-rising mountains of ruin – especially when the things we make and build are beginning to look more and more like rubbish even before they are thrown away?"

"It would be, of course, much better, if this occasion were celebrated with no talk at all, and if I addressed you in the manner of the ancient teachers of Zen, I should hit the microphone with my fan and leave. But I somehow have the feeling that since you have contributed to the support of the Zen Center, in expectation of learning something, a few words should be said, even though I warn you, that by explaining these things to you, I shall subject you to a very serious hoax."

It's time to retreat! To pleasure or to wanderlust...

... But let's do talk soon!

Tags: After Words, Patterns of Language, Language, Orion Magazine, Language Garden, Susanne Antonetta, Zen, Alan Watts, Religion