{"id":10305,"date":"2012-03-23T11:20:53","date_gmt":"2012-03-23T15:20:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=10305"},"modified":"2012-03-23T11:36:40","modified_gmt":"2012-03-23T15:36:40","slug":"the-calm-at-the-core-of-disorder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2012\/03\/the-calm-at-the-core-of-disorder\/","title":{"rendered":"The Calm at the Core of Disorder"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name=\"top\"><\/a><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/TPgs_BrvZek?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"600\" height=\"305\"><\/iframe><br \/>\n<em>[<a title=\"Lyrics: 'Saints &amp; Liars'\" onclick=\"javascript:wopen('https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/lyrics\/saintsliars_ponyboy.html', 'new', 430, 500); return false;\">Lyrics<\/a>]<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"smalltext\"><em>[Video: &#8220;Saints &amp; Liars,&#8221; by Pony Boy. See <a href=\"#note\">the note<\/a> at the foot of this post for more information.]<\/em><\/p>\n<p>From <em><a title=\"whiskey river: Jusan Ed Brown, on the virtues of a scattered mind\" href=\"http:\/\/whiskeyriver.blogspot.com\/2012\/03\/there-is-tremendous-power-in-unearthing.html\" target=\"_blank\">whiskey river<\/a><\/em>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>There is tremendous power in unearthing, in recognizing distracted, scattered mind, the mind which would rather be anywhere but here, and spending some time there, with that mind. Rather than being an anonymous voice from the dark bossing you around, scattered mind is someone you can sit down and hang out with.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Jusan Ed Brown)<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<a title=\"whiskey river: 'A Settlement,' by Mary Oliver\" href=\"http:\/\/whiskeyriver.blogspot.com\/2012\/03\/settlement-look-its-spring.html\" target=\"_blank\">and<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>A Settlement<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Look, it&#8217;s spring. And last year&#8217;s loose dust has turned<br \/>\ninto this soft willingness. The wind-flowers have come<br \/>\nup trembling, slowly the brackens are up-lifting their<br \/>\ncurvaceous and pale bodies. The thrushes have come<br \/>\nhome, none less than filled with mystery, sorrow,<br \/>\nhappiness, music, ambition.<\/p>\n<p>And I am walking out into all of this with nowhere to<br \/>\ngo and no task undertaken but to turn the pages of<br \/>\nthis beautiful world over and over, in the world of my mind.<\/p>\n<p>* * *<\/p>\n<p>Therefore, dark past,<br \/>\nI&#8217;m about to do it.<br \/>\nI&#8217;m about to forgive you<\/p>\n<p>for everything.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Mary Oliver [<em><a title=\"Google Books: 'What Do We Know: Poems and Prose Poems,' by Mary Oliver\" href=\"http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=jwYyGQh0M5gC&amp;pg=PA45#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false\" target=\"_blank\">source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<a title=\"whiskey river: Henepola Gunaratana, on calming the noise just by observing it\" href=\"http:\/\/whiskeyriver.blogspot.com\/2012\/03\/its-all-show-deception.html\" target=\"_blank\">and<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>It&#8217;s all a show, a deception. Your urges scream and bluster at you; they cajole; they coax; they threaten; but they really carry no stick at all. You give in out of habit. You give in because you never really bother to look beyond the threat. It is all empty back there. There is only one way to learn this lesson, though. The words on this page won&#8217;t do it. But look within and watch the stuff coming up &#8212; restlessness, anxiety, impatience, pain &#8212; just watch it come up and don&#8217;t get involved. Much to your surprise, it will simply go away. It rises, it passes away. As simple as that. There is another word for self-discipline. It is patience.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Henepola Gunaratana [<em><a title=\"Google Books: 'Mindfulness in Plain English,' by Henepola Gunaratana\" href=\"http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=4uYFFPOZIC8C&amp;pg=PA86#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false\" target=\"_blank\">source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Not from <em>whiskey river<\/em>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I\u2019m for mystery, not interpretive answers&#8230; The answer is never the answer. What\u2019s really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you\u2019ll always be seeking. I\u2019ve never seen anybody really find the answer, but they think they have. So they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Ken Kesey [<em><a title=\"Paris Review: 'The Art of Fiction, #136: Ken Kesey'\" href=\"http:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/interviews\/1830\/the-art-of-fiction-no-136-ken-kesey\" target=\"_blank\">source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;and:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Elizabethan<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em>Some gentler passion slide into my mind,<\/em><br \/>\n<em> For I am soft and made of melting snow<\/em><br \/>\n<em> \u2014Queen Elizabeth I<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Her sex sent her mother<br \/>\nto the tower,<br \/>\nmade her father profligate<br \/>\nwith arrogant desires,<\/p>\n<p>but she was made of flint<br \/>\nand backbone.<\/p>\n<p>Think of a young girl<br \/>\nin a blue velvet bodice,<br \/>\na white collar and lace,<br \/>\nthe very prototype<br \/>\nof virginal.<\/p>\n<p>Think of a woman, her court<br \/>\nenlivened by suitors and lovers<br \/>\nin doublets, in brocaded cloaks,<br \/>\ndespite suspicions of their motives<br \/>\nstaining the sheets,<\/p>\n<p>the way cups of spicy,<br \/>\nflowery mead were sipped<br \/>\ndespite the possibility<br \/>\nof poison.<\/p>\n<p>Even the crown of the sun<br \/>\nmust go down each night.<\/p>\n<p>Could she have stood at the prow<br \/>\nof a ship in that great Armada she ordered,<br \/>\ninstead of at a window, waiting<br \/>\nfor urgent results?<\/p>\n<p>Could she have guessed that the words<br \/>\nof a man she inspired, carved<br \/>\ninto the marble of ages,<br \/>\nhad a muscular beauty<br \/>\nmore than equal<br \/>\nto her own worldly triumphs?<\/p>\n<p>Daughter, Queen, Ruler<br \/>\nof roiling seas, of meandering<br \/>\nrivers and meadows,<br \/>\nof armies of soldiers, their swords<br \/>\nand armor glittering<br \/>\nlike planets to her sun.<\/p>\n<p>Namesake to an age.<\/p>\n<p>And Poet?<br \/>\nWhen she turned<br \/>\nto the empty parchment<br \/>\n(or once to a windowpane,<br \/>\na diamond for quill)<br \/>\neverything<br \/>\nmust have gone quiet.<\/p>\n<p>Even a queen is naked<br \/>\nbefore the naked page, awaiting<br \/>\nnot the generous spoils owed to a victor<br \/>\nbut the gifts freely given<br \/>\nof a besotted muse.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Linda Pastan [<em><a title=\"Poetry Foundation: 'Elizabethan,' by Linda Pastan\" href=\"http:\/\/www.poetryfoundation.org\/poem\/243418\" target=\"_blank\">source<\/a><\/em>])<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;and:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I stand up.<\/p>\n<p>I am very quiet. Let the months and years come, they can take nothing from me, they can take nothing more. I am so alone, and so without hope that I can confront them without fear. The life that has borne me through these years in still in my hands and my eyes. Whether I have subdued it, I know not. But so long as it is there it will seek its own way out, heedless of the will that is within me.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(Erich Maria Remarque, <em>All Quiet on the Western Front<\/em>)<\/p>\n<p>________________________<\/p>\n<p><a name=\"note\"><\/a><strong>About the video:<\/strong>\u00a0<a title=\"Pony Boy's Web site\" href=\"http:\/\/ponyboymusic.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Pony Boy<\/a> is the recent solo project of a Los Angeles-based singer\/DJ named Marchelle Bradanini, who previously (still?) served as the lead vocalist for Bedtime for Toys (<a title=\"Wikipedia, on Bedtime for Toys\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Bedtime_for_Toys\" target=\"_blank\">Wikipedia<\/a>: &#8220;a multi-ethnic and multi-gender dance rock band&#8221;; the music of Pony Boy and that of Bedtime for Toys seem to be broadcast from entirely different planets).<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been sitting on a draft <em>Midweek Music Break<\/em>\u00a0post about this song\/video since first encountering it <a title=\"Beat Surrender, on Pony Boy\" href=\"http:\/\/www.beat-surrender.com\/2011\/12\/07\/pony-boy-ep\/\" target=\"_blank\">at <em>Beat Surrender<\/em><\/a>\u00a0back in December. In fact, I&#8217;d almost forgotten about it entirely &#8212; despite its many merits and pleasures, just because I&#8217;ve now got about a dozen <em>MwMB<\/em>\u00a0drafts in the hopper, and keep adding new ones.<\/p>\n<p>So why include it here today?<\/p>\n<p>Get this: <em>I dreamt about the song last night<\/em>. Note that I didn&#8217;t dream about the video, nor about Pony Boy herself, but about the <em>song<\/em>. It wasn&#8217;t even clear at all in my dream whether the vocalist was male or female. I just dreamt of a song with a slow, easy, almost hypnotic rhythm; I dreamt of a reverbed voice; I dreamt of lyrics which included the word &#8220;saint&#8221; and the word &#8220;liar,&#8221; as I thought; and I dreamt of that singular background keyboard instrument &#8212; an organ? or a Mellotron? &#8212; scaffolding the whole thing. When I woke up, it drove me crazy: it was a real song, I knew, but I couldn&#8217;t think where I&#8217;d heard it. In fact, I&#8217;d half-convinced myself it must have been in a David Lynch film&#8230; After all, I could sorta-kinda picture it being performed from a stage in a roadhouse, not unlike the one in <em>Twin Peaks<\/em>&#8230; and the dreamy voice &#8212; a guy&#8217;s? a woman&#8217;s? &#8212; haunted, too&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;and then I remembered.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m pretty sure I&#8217;ve never dreamed about a song before, and I take it as a sign from the Universe that I should give &#8220;Saints &amp; Liars&#8221; a central role today. Please feel free to decide for yourself whether all this hints at a mind disordered, or otherwise.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><em>[<a href=\"#top\">back to top<\/a>]<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[Lyrics] [Video: &#8220;Saints &amp; Liars,&#8221; by Pony Boy. See the note at the foot of this post for more information.] From whiskey river: There is tremendous power in unearthing, in recognizing distracted, scattered mind, the mind which would rather be anywhere but here, and spending some time there, with that mind. Rather than being an [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[247,1393,2252,74,251],"tags":[595,992,1812,1860,2897,2898,2899,2900],"class_list":{"0":"post-10305","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-ruminations","7":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","8":"category-midweek-music-break","9":"category-music","10":"category-poetry-writing_cat","11":"tag-mary-oliver","12":"tag-dreams","13":"tag-linda-pastan","14":"tag-ken-kesey","15":"tag-pony-boy","16":"tag-henepola-gunaratana","17":"tag-jusan-ed-brown","18":"tag-erich-maria-remarque","19":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-2Gd","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10305"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10305\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10323,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10305\/revisions\/10323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}