Wake up!

"Wake up! How many people really know that they are alive!" So bellowed Jim Morrison in a live concert recording of The Doors in my youth, thirty years after the recording took place.

The appeal of this sermonizing from a Rock God, lay in all what was unspoken in my life as a sixteen year old. The unquestioned necessity to get a job ASAP. In my household, the issue was making a living, full stop. Questions about fulfillment were never even discussed. The music raised the questions no one was asking.

The question about human fulfillment is a difficult one, for it creates uncertainty. There is the possibility that you will start working against other peoples' expectations.

Maybe the factory job is not what you want to do with your life. Nor is the marriage and the 2.4 children. Perhaps family and friends will resent the fact that you even dare question the ways in which they are living. Wanting to do something else may be viewed as a veiled form of criticism.

Eighteen years on and I finally know what I want to do. It will take a little time to prepare the funds to jump. I have to hold back from the temptation to escape every weekend. I will hold firm, knowing that in a short period of time - I will have finally started living my own life.

Walking tour of London

Yesterday was a beautiful day. As soon as I got into London and booked into my hotel, I had a few hours to spare before going to see Will Self. I got the tube to Oxford Circus and started my walk.

I love being out and about and walking the streets. It gives me the chance to observe other poeple, take stock of the scene and get my head showered. London is especially good for this. There are so many people to bump into and so many nationalities to observe.

I walked along Oxford Street, piles of shoppers going about their ordinary business before taking a right into Soho. This is probably the seediest part of London. The place is full of sex shops, appartments with open doors advertising 'models' and nameless throngs of tourists mixed up in all of this. I even spotted a courier service called, "My Sister is a Bike." It took me a moment to realise what this was all about.

Soho is perhaps the strangest part of London. There is a errie vibe and you can be sure there are things happening behind closed doors that it is difficult to imagine.

From there I went to China Town. There are lots of shop windows with ducks slowly getting cooked. The duck fat drips on meat products I cannot identify. I was reminded here of how within western culture, we have certain norms when to comes to food. One would rarely think of eating certain parts of an animal, such as a heart. This also reminds me to keep an open mind; try not to assume anything just because it is deemed 'normal.'

From there I went to Charing Cross before moving onto Covent Garden. I found myself a nice pub with an outdoor seating area. I bought a pint of ale that is not available back home. There were more tourists taking photographs of a theatre facade close by. Then I noticed a women actly strangely across the street from me. She kneeled down on her hunches before lighting a cigarette and puffing at it madly, looking over. She hardly took a breath between drags. I ignored her and she finally got up and walked away. I am not sure if this was my imagination or if she was looking for 'some business.' She just seemed too forward for it to be concidental. So having finished my pint, I got up and walked toward The Royal Mile before swinging left past The Houses of Parliament.

I walked across the Thames and took a left along the South Bank. This is my favourite part of London. There are many street performers and artists. Located here also is The Tate Modern, HMS Belfast, The Golden Hinde, The Globe Theatre, The British Film Institute, South Bank University and The London School of Economics. They even have an area for teenagers to skate board and spray-can the walls. I had another drink in a pub here before crossing the Thames again at Tower Bridge. I walked past The Tower of London, the place where Mary Queen of Scots was executed. (There is a family myth that we are related to The Stuarts through my maternal line!)

Making my way into the finacial district I found a pub named 'Addendum.' I texted my band mates to tell them of this strange coincidence. A pub named after our band! I even joked that if 'Addendum' ever make another CD, we would use the front of the pub as an album cover. A little like The Doors did for their album, 'Morrison Hotel.'

From there I walked through Algate and Algate East. This is where I lived for six weeks when I was in secondment in London. It brought back great memories. There were eight Scottish colleagues and eight colleagues from Belfast all living in a hotel together. We had a great time. Eating out every night, we got to know London and each other pretty well. This is when I fell in love with the place. There is just so much to do. You have access to great music and other art forms. It makes Belfast look like a village!

I got on the tube at Liverpool Street Station to catch the book reading. A great day joyfully wasted.

Miles Davis: A Different Kind of Blue

Last night I watched a documentary about Miles Davis entitled "A Different Kind Of Blue." The title comes from two sources. First, a portrait Joni Mitchell painted of Miles after his death. This is also a reference to a 1959 album entitled, "A Kind of Blue." The documentary included the 38 minute performance of Miles at the Isle of Wight festival in 1970. (What a gig that would have been! Artists included Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, Leonard Cohen, The Who and Free.)

I never really 'got' Jazz. The closest I came to developing an interest was while watching a scene in the film Collateral. Tom Cruise goes into a Jazz club to kill the owner. While having a drink, Cruise's character talks about listening behind the music. There is an emphasis here on live jazz and an existential attitude of improvision. It works well for the film but I thought that it was overstated.

How wrong I was! Miles' performance at this festival was really something else. In a clip, Joe Satriani talks about listening to the music and how it awakens 'multi-dimensional consciousness.'

There is no centre to jazz. This is not to say that it is just random noise. Little themes are developed here and there, while other bits of music are picked up and worked on before being dropped. There is great freedom in this way of playing.

As far as Miles' performance, there is a hint of ecstasy, a freeing of boundaries and an expressive joy in the combination of melodies.

I once read that Jack Kerouac aimed at developing a jazz style when writing "On The Road." Again, there was no centre to that work, just re-ocurring themes in a spiritual quest of expressivity.

It now makes sense.

People Are Strange

It was Jim Morrison who wrote and sung, "People are strange, when you're a stranger. Faces look ugly when your alone. Women seem wicked when you're unwanted. Streets are uneven when you're down."

It is a fantastic song and one of The Doors best loved. Again, it is an example of how language can marshall behaviours and dampen creativity. These lyrics also seem to be a response to something that is probably instilled within all cultures.

I once got a school report in which my English teacher commented, "Glenn is a unique and interesting individual." Which is a kind of nice way of saying that I was weird!

It doesn't have the same effect though. I was proud of this comment and it helped build my confidence in myself. I have certain ways of dealing with people and seeing the world and that is okay!

Of course, there are huge presures to fit in. Sometimes people need say nothing. Someone just has to give a look and you know that they disapprove. It can therefore take a lot of guts and determination to remain creative. Creative people by defination don't always fit in. They more than likely stand out for they don't think and behave in ways that are expected. In such circumstances, you can also be ignored because people don't know how to deal with you.

Returning to The Doors song one notices that there is a double bind with feeling out of place. The world can become strange too. One can have a sense of anomie and the desire can then become an overpowering one of wanting to belong. That this song actually exists gives one another answer. The song still manages to communicate without there being such a desire to fit in. It has a 'take me or leave me' attitude. More in fact- there is an empathy with this way of communicating. It is a song that is concerned with other human beings. It is saying- don't judge me because I am different or not like you. I can understand your desire to judge but there is no need! I am different but the same.