There is only the dance ...
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Dana Lomas
Jan 9, 2021, 8:20:46 AM1/9/21
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A reading of T S Eliot's The Four Quartets
David Sundaram
Jan 9, 2021, 9:46:59 AM1/9/21
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It's a 'deep' dive! 🛐
For those who to might like to read-n-stop to contemplate
Dana Lomas
Jan 9, 2021, 10:45:13 AM1/9/21
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It makes for an intriguing juxtaposition between the pleasure of reading it vis-a-vis the pleasure of listening to it being read.
Gary Goldberg
Jan 9, 2021, 2:41:53 PM1/9/21
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It is a beautiful and deeply insightful piece of literature. For me, the key insight is into the nature of space and time as emanations from the point of origin. Which links to a variety of sources including Jean Gebser, Donald D Hoffman, David Bohm, and Bernardo Kastrup. Space and time are constructs of meta-consciousness primarily emanating from the thought systems of the left cerebral hemisphere. Where is the 'ever-present' point of origin? Look to the non-dominant right hemisphere, Iain McGilchrist's 'Master', would be the clue that I would give.
There is a very nice piece about TS Eliot's Burnt Norton in Maria Popova's 'Brain Pickings' with a recording of the poet reading his poem...
And one other thing that, I think, might be directly related is a composition by Bruce Cockburn and Andy Milne called 'Everywhere Dance', which is one of my favorite songs of all time...
There are two versions of this song... https://andymilne.com/music/yall-just-dont-know/track/everywhere-dance/ on Andy Milne's album 'Dapp Theory'
And on Bruce Cockburn's album "You've Never Seen Everything"... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYzVc2vJdqo
'And we cry out for Grace to lay Truth bare,
The Dance is the Truth, and its everywhere..."
Gary Goldberg
Jan 9, 2021, 2:49:56 PM1/9/21
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Now, take this and juxtapose it with Jung's ideas about Synchronicity, which I found referenced in this book by Gary Lachman... about which the author is interviewed here...
By the way, this is an AMAZING book...
And this is a great guitar instrumental written and performed by Bruce Cockburn... 'Bardo Rush' ... this is a GREAT CD of Cockburn instrumentals...
Dana Lomas
Jan 9, 2021, 2:50:47 PM1/9/21
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Gary ... Never actually heard this Cockburn piece before, which is also profoundly insightful ... thanks for sharing.
Gary Goldberg
Jan 9, 2021, 2:54:01 PM1/9/21
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You are welcome, Dana. I have been a Bruce Cockburn fan for as long as I can remember going back to his first eponymous release and his little ditty, 'Going to the Country'...
Man that brings back a ton of beautiful memories!
Thanks for taking the focus onto TS Eliot and 'The Four Quartets'... and helping me to pull this all together around that point of connection.
I am just really charged up after finishing Gary Lachman's book last night...
Lou Gold
Jan 9, 2021, 3:09:02 PM1/9/21
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T S is incredible. Amazing that a college kid wrote a Love Song setting Victorian sensual alienation to lovely rhythm. Quite a marvel.
Lou Gold
Jan 9, 2021, 3:13:54 PM1/9/21
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So nice to hear it in a feminine voice. Thanks for this version.
On Saturday, January 9, 2021 at 3:20:46 AM UTC-10 Dana Lomas wrote:
Gary Goldberg
Jan 9, 2021, 3:26:54 PM1/9/21
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And then there is this live performance of 'Celestial Horses' by Bruce Cockburn.....
This is just so amazing... great song and great virtuosic guitar playing... just stunning!
And then there is this incredible guitar solo with a bit of amazing echo...just an absolutely unbelievable live performance......
And the recorded performance of this same piece is worth a listen as well, from another compilation of his amazing instrumental guitar performances called 'Speechless'...
And, this performance of 'World of Wonders' is really a wonder unto itself... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYJEocg29HE
And what is the message? That we need to work hard at doing whatever is humanly possible to preserve and protect this World of Wonders...
Sorry to have gotten a little carried away here and taken this thread off track a bit, actually way off on a bit of a crazy musical tangent, but, unfortunately, when it comes to this music, I just cannot help myself... :-)
And I think that great pieces of performance art, and great poems such as 'The Four Quartets' really go hand in hand in so many ways...
Dana Lomas
Jan 9, 2021, 4:23:51 PM1/9/21
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Gary ... no worries, not off-topic at all. And yes, Lachman's Lost Knowledge of the Imagination is brilliant.
Lou Gold
Jan 9, 2021, 4:34:37 PM1/9/21
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I think that great pieces of performance art, and great poems such as 'The Four Quartets' really go hand in hand in so many ways...
Perhaps, the sympatico is because life and poetry are performance arts.
Gary Goldberg
Jan 9, 2021, 8:11:02 PM1/9/21
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I was so impressed with 'Lost Knowledge of the Imagination'! I really learned a tremendous amount from it and really resonated strongly with what he covers in this book. It is quite impressive that he covers so much territory on that book. I am still absorbing it... but it has stimulated a lot of thought about some very cool ideas...
Ashvin Pandurangi
Jan 9, 2021, 9:32:33 PM1/9/21
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Gary,
I also loved Lachman's book on the Lost Knowledge of the Imagination. Regarding Jung, I have just been reading Bergson's essay Introduction to Metaphysics and his arguments (and even his method of making them) is remarkably similar to Jung's. It reminded me a lot of essays in Modern Man in Search of a Soul. The big difference I would say is that Jung took the arguments one step further to rediscover a fixity working through and against the fluidity of mental process.
"Space and time are constructs of meta-consciousness primarily emanating from the thought systems of the left cerebral hemisphere. Where is the 'ever-present' point of origin? Look to the non-dominant right hemisphere, Iain McGilchrist's 'Master', would be the clue that I would give"
This is a great point. Gebser speaks about the archaic consciousness as spaceless and timeless, which certainly fits in with the right brain's responsibility for kicking into gear our survival instincts when errors in judgment are made, the complexity of the world floods back in and the spatio-temporal interface must be abandoned because it is simply too damn slow to keep us alive in those situations. He also refers to the 'aperspectival' consciousness as 'space-free' and 'time-free', to highlight how it integrates the archaic/magical/mythic and mental structures by allowing a 'spherical' consciousness that is not limited to only conscious perspective in space or time (Nolan's movies Interstellar and Tenet are great imaginative visualizations of this).
Ashvin Pandurangi
Jan 9, 2021, 9:49:10 PM1/9/21
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"to rediscover a fixity working through and against the fluidity of mental process"
*technically the above is not accurate - the 'fixity' is the Self which mediates the fluid mental forces working through and against each other.
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