HOW TO BE COMPOSED

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What’s on today: An essay and poem inspired by a Sunday Scribblings prompt. Have you had a go yet? … PLUS … A story inspired by an Inspire Me Thursday prompt. Click Eye On the World for my current affairs.
YOU KNOW IT’S THE WRITE WAY

HOW TO BE COMPOSED

When a composer writes a song, he doesn’t just deal in notes, riff, or words. Rather, he indulges in the spirituality, the bonding, of existence, seeking the ultimate balance of things. This is why good music can reach the soul.
Pythagoras would have understood this. In devising math, he is believed not to have wanted to simply calculate, but to understand the sympathy of things, the unique perfection of music, and its relationship to our psyche.

We don’t understand this balance in the west.

We have clear notions of opposites – of good and evil, right and wrong. In eastern philosophy it is different. It deals with a lifeforce made up of dual influences of preservation and destruction.
These opposites, however, are not in conflict, but in harmony, forming a unique balance, a sympathy with each other. To the west, this can seem amoral, but can we learn from this system? Maybe we need to find a balance between east and west.

This balance – this music – can be taken into our lives.

We ‘are’ because of our influences and our choices. Yet so often we seem to be involved in everlasting conflict. Maybe this is because our choices are out of balance.
Maybe we should take a hint from the east, and realize we can make choices based on balance, instead of the conflict of opposites. And as in the east, maybe we should learn to balance our minds to the infinite possibilities available to us, rather than the single mindedness that the conflict of opposites usually entails.
We hold it in our psyche to gain composure in all things through right choice. Do so, and you can be in tune with things, a mind at ease, as one with the music of life.

© Anthony North, April 2008

TO COMPOSE

We compose, we do, we create,
it is our inevitable fate;
In all things, we try to make,
for ourselves, and for others’ sake;
Our ultimate victory in part,
is our skill, our craft, our art;
Yet why do we do it at all,
when it will all inevitably fall?
With entropy the world arose,
which means everything will always decompose;
So why do we do it, I pray,
when it will all eventually decay?
To show our existence, we do it, I say,
and then for others,
we make way

(c) Anthony North, April 2008

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POLLY AND THE WASTEFUL NEIGHBOUR

Polly Picasso had often wondered if life imitated art, but no more. Her life was proof that it does. Indeed, she was reflecting on this one morning when, suddenly, the heaviest of heavy metal filled the air. Rushing to the window, her neighbour was at it again, music blasting out of the open window, and at a regular period, empty beer cans pinged out of the window, landing in the can along with all the other rubbish. Some people, thought Polly Picasso, will just NOT recycle.
Determined to make a difference, she immediately went to her work table – took up all manner of paints, crayons and other arty stuff, and in no time at all she had made a perfect image of recycling. She then went to her magic rug, sat down silently and meditated, safe in the knowledge that her art magic would work.
It was a month later that she spied her neighbour going outside and placing the can in his new array of recycling containers. Even his music was quieter, she thought, and her magic had certainly worked.
He, on the other hand, had not been so sure at first. After all, it soon became annoying finding a different small painting in his mail box every morning. From recycling bins, to destroyed rainforests, to images of violent weather, they infuriated him. Several times he waited up all night, shotgun in hand, waiting for the pest to appear. But eventually the message had sunk in.
And it was with pride that Polly Picasso realized her art magic had worked once more. However, she was slightly disturbed when, with a gurgle and a bang, the daily waste and residue of artistic endeavour finally blocked the pipes, and the plumbing did a bit of recycling of its own.
Still, life, art and magic can be like that some times, she knew.

© Anthony North, April 2008

TRIUMPHANT SURVIVAL

READ MY ULTIMATE MAGAZINE POST - Something posted most days – keep visiting!
What’s on today: A story, poem and essay inspired by a Writers’ Island prompt. Have you had a go yet? Click Eye On the World for my current affairs.
YOU KNOW IT’S THE WRITE WAY

THE SURVIVOR

To be here, in paradise, would have been so perfect. I look around me and see life in abundance, the sun shining bright, water aplenty. But as soon as the plane crashed I knew paradise would have a bitter taste.
We had survived unscathed, Jane and I, which was a miracle in itself. But we were city people, and civilization was hundreds of miles away. What did we know of hunting, or even what fruits were safe to eat?

I tried it once, but picked wrong.

Jane nursed me through the fever, the vomiting. And afterwards, the hunger …
It clung to us did the hunger, and I suppose we were resolved to the fact that we were going to die.
A strange realization, that – the inevitability of death. In a way it provided an inner peace, and though it sounds strange, it brought us much closer together as a couple. Indeed, as we made love, it seemed that we were Adam and Eve in a Biblical Paradise on Earth.
But of course, I survived, whereas Jane did not. Maybe it was due to the carnal knowledge learnt in that same Eden, how love is so all consuming.
Well, I have to live with the knowledge of sin, now, as Adam and Eve lived. And I know I had a kind of perverted spiritual bond with her, birthed in the knowledge of our ecstasy, and the taking of that first love bite.

© Anthony North, April 2008

EVEREYONE’S A SURVIVOR

Survival comes in many a form,
from life’s strange tricks, against the norm;
From our first moment on the Earth,
we’ve survived the trauma of our birth;
As children we run the gauntlet of fate,
as we play, explore, our curiosity we sate;
In career, in love, in all we do,
we risk it all, as we pursue;
So maybe survival, it is rife,
we do, we conquer, on the edge of a knife,
‘cos to survive is
quite simply
life

(c) Anthony North, April 2008

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TRIUMPHANT US

We aim for success, to be triumphant. It is at the core of what we do. But how realistic are our hopes, our desires? Can we ever be truly triumphant, or is it really a fool’s errand?
In one sense, it is. We live to fulfill a dream, but a dream is so often fantasy. This isn’t to say that we shouldn’t dream, but maybe we need to realize it is the journey that is important, and not the outcome. After all, if successful, what then?
To be fully triumphant is also to reach perfection. But can this ever be truly achieved? Modern society tells us it can. But like the Medieval Christian trying to reach the perfection of the Saint, it is impossible.
Indeed, often the urge to be triumphant and perfect is a control mechanism. In western consumer society, it seems it can be bought, with designer clothes or the surgeon’s knife, but it is simply an advertising ploy to make sure you spend.
And it is so successful because it reaches to the heart of our psyche. The psychologist Abraham Maslow understood this better than most. In his ‘hierarchy of needs’, he understood what are impulses are.
We have basic wants, such as food, shelter, sex, family, security. But once these are achieved, we yearn for self-esteem – to be someone. And from there, our true realization in self-actualisation.
But as is usually the case, self-esteem is ego, and once ego raises its head we are never satisfied by what we’ve achieved, and self-actualisation the dream. So even in our deepest urges and psyche, the urge to be fully triumphant can bind us in chains.
Maybe liberation can come by realizing this simple fact.

© Anthony North, April 2008