![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/johnesimpson.com\/images\/goodthoughtspussycat_gbooth_med.jpg?ssl=1\" "\\"Cartoon")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
[Caption: “I want you to start thinking good thoughts about someone <\/em>new at our house. I want you to start thinking good thoughts about a pussy cat.” Cartoon by George Booth, from his 1975 collection, <\/em>Think Good Thoughts About a Pussy Cat.]<\/em><\/p>\n From whiskey river’s commonplace book<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n Sojourns in the Parallel World<\/strong><\/p>\n We live our lives of human passions, (Denise Levertov [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n …and:<\/p>\n Things to Think<\/strong><\/p>\n Think in ways you’ve never thought before Think that someone may bring a bear to your door, When someone knocks on the door, think that he’s about (Robert Bly [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Not from whiskey river<\/em>:<\/p>\n The added confidence that comes from trying to help people can also help you with investors. One of the founders of Chatterous<\/a> told me recently that he and his cofounder had decided that this service was something the world needed, so they were going to keep working on it no matter what, even if they had to move back to Canada and live in their parents’ basements.<\/p>\n Once they realized this, they stopped caring so much what investors thought about them. They still met with them, but they weren’t going to die if they didn’t get their money. And you know what? The investors got a lot more interested. They could sense that the Chatterouses were going to do this startup with or without them.<\/p>\n If you’re really committed and your startup is cheap to run, you become very hard to kill. And practically all startups, even the most successful, come close to death at some point. So if doing good for people gives you a sense of mission that makes you harder to kill, that alone more than compensates for whatever you lose by not choosing a more selfish project.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n (Paul Graham<\/a>, on the value to a new company of, well, thinking good<\/em>)<\/p>\n Finally… Surely one of the longest-running bands in rock history is the British boogie-rock<\/a> group called Status Quo (also known as simply the Quo, or plain-old Quo). They’ve been around under one name or the other since the early ’60s, adopting the Status Quo name in 1967; most recently, they played a couple of months ago at the UK’s annual Glastonbury music festival. According<\/a> to the BBC:<\/p>\n Veteran rock group Status Quo have had more hit singles than any other band in UK chart history, according to research published by Guinness World Records.<\/p>\n The band has scored 61 chart successes, dating from “Pictures of Matchstick Men” in 1968 to “You’ll Come Around” in 2004.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Here are the top ten in the most-UK-singles list as of 2005, when the BBC article was published; you’ll probably recognize a few of these names, which will give you some perspective on Status Quo’s achievement:<\/p>\n (source: Guinness World Records, via the above BBC report)<\/em><\/p>\n Most of Status Quo’s singles include vocals. Their first release of a straight-up instrumental was the one below, “Good Thinking,” from 1971.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [Caption: “I want you to start thinking good thoughts about someone new at our house. I want you to start thinking good thoughts about a pussy cat.” Cartoon by George Booth, from his 1975 collection, Think Good Thoughts About a Pussy Cat.] From whiskey river’s commonplace book: Sojourns in the Parallel World We live our […]<\/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":[247,1393,74,251],"tags":[178,850,1394,1395,1396,1397],"class_list":{"0":"post-5588","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-ruminations","7":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","8":"category-music","9":"category-poetry-writing_cat","10":"tag-whiskey-river","11":"tag-denise-levertov","12":"tag-george-booth","13":"tag-robert-bly","14":"tag-paul-graham","15":"tag-status-quo","16":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-1s8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5588","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=5588"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20645,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5588\/revisions\/20645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\ncruelties, dreams, concepts,
\ncrimes and the exercise of virtue
\nin and beside a world devoid
\nof our preoccupations, free
\nfrom apprehension — though affected,
\ncertainly, by our actions. A world
\nparallel to our own though overlapping.
\nWe call it “Nature”; only reluctantly
\nadmitting ourselves to be “Nature” too.
\nWhenever we lose track of our own obsessions,
\nour self-concerns, because we drift for a minute,
\nan hour even, of pure (almost pure)
\nresponse to that insouciant life:
\ncloud, bird, fox, the flow of light, the dancing
\npilgrimage of water, vast stillness
\nof spellbound ephemerae on a lit windowpane,
\nanimal voices, mineral hum, wind
\nconversing with rain, ocean with rock, stuttering
\nof fire to coal — then something tethered
\nin us, hobbled like a donkey on its patch
\nof gnawed grass and thistles, breaks free.
\nNo one discovers
\njust where we’ve been, when we’re caught up again
\ninto our own sphere (where we must
\nreturn, indeed, to evolve our destinies)
\n— but we have changed, a little.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nIf the phone rings, think of it as carrying a message
\nLarger than anything you’ve ever heard,
\nVaster than a hundred lines of Yeats.<\/p>\n
\nMaybe wounded and deranged; or think that a moose
\nHas risen out of the lake, and he’s carrying on his antlers
\nA child of your own whom you’ve never seen.<\/p>\n
\nTo give you something large: tell you you’re forgiven,
\nOr that it’s not necessary to work all the time, or that it’s
\nBeen decided that if you lie down no one will die.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n