Looking back over previous posts in this blog I am becoming aware more than ever of the folly of airing any future plans and dreams and I’m becoming increasingly wary, almost superstitious, of discussing such things,(especially now in the light of recent events), as more often than not my current intentions are transformed into their opposite, apparent progress turns retrograde, reformations stagnate, and planned routes end up taking more short-cuts and detours through the ventricles of my heart and the canyons of my mind. But at the same time if you don’t say it, what’s the point of having a blog in the first place -good question that, what is the point?..I often think why do I keep doing this, is it just attention seeking or is it really about a Theophany, an awareness of God within and among us. Where’s the guidance here John Hick?... ‘well my boy, if it tends to lead fom self-centeredness to other centeredness it’s OK I think’, says the esteemed Professor.
One example of what Rabbie Burns maybe was getting at can be seen in my frequent comments on the progress of my book and it’s proposed accompanying website* – This giant Albatross that has been decomposing round my neck after landing on my shoulder way back in 2003 with a message tied to its leg concerning an account of my own indigenous spirituality told in a somewhat didactic and edifying manner that has now completely festered and is no-longer fit for human consumption in the global cafe culture of music, art, and spirituality that has blossomed in the Cathedral Quarter of the cyberfantatastic Web of Wyrd in recent years. (phew). As an itinerant busker on the streets of this sector I have been trying to develop and hawk reproductions of the sounds and scribbles told to me by this cursed sea bird on a boat where everybody’s talking but nobody’s listening. The enforced retirement I have experienced recently due to ill health and insanity has turned out to be a mixed blessing, a good example of the fallacious meaning of the Chinese character wei chi in action – or in other words the ‘crisis/opportunities’ that life throws up as a challenge now and again that are mixed into the joy and pain of love and fear we each encounter every day. The great thing that becoming ill bestows upon the patient ‘Patient’ is the gift of time and space, and it becomes relatively easy to embark upon imaginary journey’s over land and sea once we accept the inevitable emptiness we feel as we sit in queues and squeeze on through strange inner portals to the airport security zones of our mind where we are eventually able to board, if we’re lucky, the easy jets of transcendence and fly over mountains and seas to exotic new continents filled with Designer Cafes of Consciousness where all is love and life is forever a beach. Anyroad, enough of these mad metaphors and lets get down to some hard/soft science. The new seismic shift that has erupted within me in the aftershock of yet another health crisis – this time a ‘stroke’ that has seriously affected my eyesight and my perception of social situations and physical co-ordination – that has indeed turned out to be a mixed blessing of profound revelations and epiphanies mixed with a local Radio Nottingham soundtrack of 50’s to 90’s music (and a little Jake Bug) that accompanies the night terrors and piss bottle balancing of hospital sleep-overs – ‘the night has a thousand eyes’- ‘I’ve made some soup Jacob’
I have been recently introduced, via the awesomely wonderful Red Ice Creations Radio program on t’internet to the work of Anthony Peake,the Wirral based author of books like ‘The Infinite Mindfield’ and ‘Is there Life After Death’.The reason I say this is his work speaks direcctly to the experiences I have been having with this stroke and also other shamanic vusion quests I've been on recently. Perhaps it was just a mere co-incidence that I passed through his part of the world on a pilgrimage to the ‘Paps of Methonwy’ between Llandudno and Conwy this past summer and found myself gazing out of the window of a National Express onto the parallel Universe of the boon docks and big ships surrounding Birkenhead that I once visited as a bright eyed 3 year old when we went to stay with our Aunty Phylis and Uncle Dave back in 1955. Enough of this rambling round the world of Adrian Henri’s ‘Liverpool Scene’. We need to focus here boy:
Meanwhile‘Bungalow Shaman’ Sammy has been going all quantum -becoming both observer and the observed as the blood supply to my brain has embarked upon new journeys, taking new short cuts and detours through the backroads of my memories ‘that keeps you ever gentle on my mind’. During this recent stroke I experienced profound deja vu’s and interesting Pissarro-esque visual disturbances .The experience has reminded me of drunken bike rides home from late night music bars in Holland (Hello Bierreclamemuseum Breda)..you get good at falling off your bike after a while as new neural pathways are opened up in the nether-lands of your soul. Once I only had numbness down the right side of my body..now it’s there on both sides....Bugga... it makes busking with a guitar so much harder I can tell you. Though for some strange reason I find singing and chanting easier now - mixed blessings..mixed blessings indeed, I might no longer have an excuse not to join the church choir now..
It’s ironic that this should happen at a time in my life where I was just beginning to feel vaguely normal, playing advanced Jazz guitar chords and even getting some stamina again playing drum kit down in my studio. I was even dreaming of running up hills and I was thinking that it would only be a matter of time before ATOS would be sending me back to work again, (not that I would employ me even in the improved state I was before this setback). I’m determined however to keep striving to make music and artwork and write to the best of my ability, or as my Occupational Therapist said yesterday, ‘if you don’t use it you lose it’. I have devised an acronym W.A.R.M. (Writing,Artwork,Research, and Music) to give focus to the structure of my day, a structure that I have to have because often I no longer know what day it is let alone what I should be doing in it!
Anyroad I think that’s enough of a post to be going on with for now, so thanks to all my friends who have sent ‘get wells’ and offered practical help too..it it is all much appreciated.
So I say,‘onward and upward, to Narnia and the North’...bugga me... now which way’s North?
*Excerpts from my abandoned book and website ‘The Parish of Cool’ can hopefully soon be found at ‘my web page’ link on the side of my full profile if you’re interested.
