Letters 3_Rebels, Time & Change

June 7, 2001

Hi, John S.,

Received your packet of poesy. Love it! Have not yet spent the proper amount of time with it, but am reading things here and there. Terrific writing, feeling, sensibility. Thank you for sending it along.

You asked how I feel about Patti Smith's post-Horses work. It may come as no surprise that I now feel differently about Patti than I did back in the '70s. To be sure, I've not checked her more recent releases, but have read reviews along the way, which indicate that she continues to write from the same psychological perspective. New works, yes, but essentially the same concept and point of view, a point of view I shared for many years.

In fact, I was still attached to that point of view when I wrote the Horses piece in 1975 [for Gig magazine]. You may recall that Tim [Buckley] had died only a few months before (on June 29, 1975), and I was not far removed from the views, perspectives, values and visions of Smith, Rimbaud, Artaud, Burroughs, Ginsberg, Kerouac, Bob Dylan and others throughout much of Western history who have often regarded themselves as "outsiders," rebels, social aliens, contemptuous of bourgeois standards, values and socio-political norms.

Since that time, I have come to see Patti Smith as representative of the archetypical social outcast, the intoxicated, rebellious misfit, but not as a true outsider.

I now see her (and others who are psychologically related to her) as extensions of the very society they presume to reject. Their rebellion is a reaction to mainstream middleclass stability and hypocrisy, and, as such, is directly linked to it and determined by it. They are part and parcel of mainstream society, albeit as cripples who embody the same psychological fragmentation, misery and confusion inherent in the society itself. They focus in on the hypocrisies, madness, greed, viciousness of the society and thus expose society's atrocious physical and psychological violence, while at the same time misinterpreting their own struggles in certain specific and dramatically misguided ways.

The violence of the imagery in the works of Smith, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Genet, Burroughs, Artaud and the others is misperceived as religious liberation through aesthetics. But I ask you, is plunging into phantasmagoric dreams and hallucinogenic fantasies clarity? Or is it intoxication mistaken for revelation. The splitting and fragmentation of the psyche passes for psychological and religious mergence of opposites. Is it truly a synthesis of opposites, a mergence with the All? Or is it a violent escape into prerational chaos, a plunge into the fragmented conflicts and imagistic overstimulation of an unconscious mind at war with itself, a descent into darkness, madness, nonconsciousness, psycho-sexual infantilism, self-destructive neurosis.

At one point in the Smith piece I sent you, I wrote, "As the ascension occurs, and as the soul is freed and whirled into the plane of phantasmagoric experience, the environment also alters. . .In each instance, isolation, inner disorientation, violent acts and terrifying dependence are transformed into unity, inner integration, self-fulfillment, sexual-spiritual ecstasy, and an overwhelming sense of power. Opposites synthesize.”

Well, I no longer think of descent into the unconscious as ascension into consciousness; of violent psychic stimulation as liberation into clarity; of intoxicated oblivion as bliss; of imagined phantasmagoric projections as revelations; of infantile psychological dependence as integration and fulfillment.

Temporary escape from pain, yes. Awakening into consciousness, no. A momentary sense of power born of sexual or chemical intoxication, yes. A sense of strength emerging out of unity with nature and the cosmos, no. Orgasmic prerational exhilaration, yes. The serenity of unity-consciousness, no. The comfort of numbness, blindness and escape from unbearable social responsibilities, yes. The union with God, with the All, no. The loss of reason and the sinking into the darkness of silent seas, surrounded by self-generated hallucinogenic visions, yes. The transcendence of reason and the ascension into clarity, light, awareness, love, compassion, no.

The consciousness Patti and the others are talking about is lower consciousness, neurosis, pain, conflict, confusion, irrationality. It is prerational and somatic, not transrational and awakened. It is narcissistic, nervous, undisciplined, disordered, spectacularly entertaining — and utterly representative of the society they reject. We are a violent, sensual, selfish, immature culture, driven by pleasure, pain, fear, the desire for security and escape, the egoic lust for sex, power, profit, prestige — and Patti Smith and other artists on the same wavelength feed those needs, for which, of course, they are well rewarded: they become pop stars and icons. They mirror society perfectly. They are not outsiders, but insiders who reflect us.

And so we love them. They skip out to the fringes of our own unconsciousness, and live our dreams and fantasies to the hilt. We cheer them as they journey further and further into the depths of our culturally shared misery and madness. We watch in fascination and glee as they twist and writhe and dance in Artaud's flames for us, staggering full-tilt boogie into the chaos of the communal mind, finally losing themselves in darkness, insanity, egotism and self-destruction. We applaud and whistle and cheer when they die on stage, the grand gesture. These are our heroes, ill, violent, tormented, disoriented, brutal. They represent all that we fear and yearn for, all that we have suppressed in our own psyches, all that we dream but dare not do. They do it for us. We buy their recordings, read their poems, watch them die their bloody deaths, then get bored, and shift our attention to the next young thing who steps into the spotlight and performs exactly the same dance.

See what I mean?

To my present way of thinking, these are not outsiders at all. They are crippled extensions of a sick, barbarically violent, lower-consciousness mainstream culture. The real outsiders live elsewhere, often in the mountains, like the ancient Chinese poet, Han Shan (700-780 A.D.).

It seems to me that authentic outsiders wage their own inner struggles in an entirely different way. They may initially be victims of fragmentation, social conditioning and all the rage and pain that goes with being told lies from the very day of one's birth. A struggle comes with the effort to make conscious that which is unconscious. The struggle involves self-examination, a dismantling of rage, fear, angst, a facing of one's self and one's demons directly and truthfully, a coming to terms with one's inner divisions, conflicts, pains, miseries.

The goal is to become one's self (by overcoming conditioning); to become sensitive and conscious (rather than insensitive and merely intoxicated); to ascend into greater awareness (not descend into unconscious oblivion and phantasmagoric dreams); to utilize reason as a steppingstone toward the transcendence of reason (not the obliteration of reason); to grow in terms of a universal human individuality that embraces all sentient beings in compassion, understanding, awareness, love — in other words, to move upward on the spectrum of consciousness from unconsciousness and darkness, through socialized conditioning, beyond social programming, into personal authenticity and the unfolding of transpersonal spiritual realization, which in fact is universal.

It is interesting how we rarely acknowledge the real outsiders with the kind of respect and appreciation and awe that we give to the mad poets and dreamers and musicians. Indeed, we kill them if we can, which in its way is the ultimate recognition society can give them. Society instinctively recognizes the true outsider, and instinctively tries to destroy him. They tried to kill Buddha many times. They poisoned Socrates. They crucified Jesus. In our own time they poisoned Osho. It goes on and on.

Those who would help us see through the psychological conditionings with which society enslaves us are dangerous to priests, politicians, businessmen and the military. They do not writhe in pain as sensationally tormented extensions of social madness, giving society validation precisely by fighting a losing battle against it. They help us see through social morality (which is egregiously immoral), fear-based greed, competition and its moral corruption, ruthless aggression, insatiable desire. They expose the lies that divide us inwardly as individuals and outwardly as nation-states in conflict with other nation-states. They help us wipe out conflicts that are inherent results of egotism, politics and organized religions (all of which have utterly failed to transform fear into love).

These folks are the true outsiders, the true rebels, the true guides out of the maze of conflict, violence, greed, madness, misery, confusion, on-going barbarism and apparently unending sorrow. These folks that lead us upward psychologically and spiritually, gently guiding us out of separate and separating egotism into harmony with nature and the cosmos, are the true outsiders. By slashing at the roots of society's conditioned values, and by teaching us how to discover our own freedom, individuality and authentic unity with the All, these men and women perform a priceless service for humankind and the earth and all beings on it. They lead us up from darkness and chaos, into the light of consciousness, psychological freedom, and spiritual wholeness. They help us discover and realize our own unity-consciousness, which is an inherent dimension of the human psyche, albeit fulfilled in only a few so far. Those few point the way for all of us — and there will come a time when all of us can and will realize the same level of consciousness that the awakened ones have realized again and again.

Every one of them points out how awakening has nothing to do with commandments, laws, rituals, dogma, belief systems, gods, saviors. It has to do with understanding and dropping all conditionings, transcending knowledge, and opening one's self to the energy of Existence itself.

When men (such as Krishnamurti or Osho) or women (such as Gangaji) start talking about these things, they immediately become politically suspect, because they are talking about health and wholeness and awareness and clarity and serenity and compassion — dangerous stuff for a society that thrives on division, conflict, fear and neurotic aggression. The Patti Smiths and Artauds and Rimbauds and Burroughs and Jean Genets of the world are safe insiders. The Buddhas and Christs and Ikkyus and Lao Tzus and Oshos are vibrant and dangerous troublemakers. It seems to me that they are the outsiders, the ones to watch for, the true heroes.

From an artistic or dramatic perspective, the heart of their journey is initially interesting because of the inner struggle one goes through to understand and escape the chains of one's own social conditioning. The authentic self wants to emerge, to become liberated from perceptual blinders, to dissolve the pain of the resulting conflicts. Part of that is rebellion, a descent into the nether worlds, perhaps through sex, drugs and rock ‘n' roll (that timeless trilogy). Patti and her friends from all ages have done that, and it makes for sensational art that sooner or later is welcomed and embraced by the society that recognizes itself — and finds it pleasurable, even if the artist was denounced by his or her own generation.

But that rebellious reaction to social power, hypocrisy and corruption and the descent into intoxication and stimulation and noise and dreams is only part of the journey. The next step is realizing that such rebellion is self-deceiving and enormously destructive — and then moving onward, away from the lower, and upward, toward higher-consciousness. That ascent, with its struggles and realizations and on-going liberation when one journeys higher from level to level, is where an even greater excitement appears.

The journey toward serenity is exciting in itself. It is evolution. It is growth and development. It is maturation and unfolding and flowering into the highest consciousness of which humankind is capable. It is self-realization — in selflessness, in transcendence of the ego, in mergence with the whole of existence. It is Christ consciousness, the heaven within. It is Buddha consciousness, Socratic consciousness, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Heraclitus, Ikkyu, Gurdjieff, Osho, Krishnamurti consciousness. All of these outsiders, and untold numbers of others who may or may not have been recognized, ascend to this same level of experience, awareness and universal being. Psychological and spiritual evolution begins in confusion and conflict, which transforms into clarity, harmony, inner and outer unity, and blisslight serenity. This is the journey true outsiders almost inevitably take. It's a profoundly exciting journey, too, do you agree?

And so you ask what I think of Patti's later works, and I find myself traveling through these many zones, from Patti and Artaud and their beautiful, impassioned friends, to the high climes of pscho-spiritual fulfillment. Only by so doing can I explain to you my notions of authentic outsiders. Obviously, there are many types and kinds — T.E. Lawrence, Nijinsky, Van Gogh are showcased in a book called The Outsiders, by Colin Wilson. And some are scholars, such as the brilliant Ken Wilber of today. But however they do it, and in whatever field, there is a striking similarity: they break loose from the dominant paradigm and bring to us a voice speaking from a higher plane — supraconscious, universal, radiant, serene, glistening, without measure (infinite), without time (eternal).

Talk with you soon,
Best,
Lee

Join the Dance?

February 5, 2001

Dear Vague Anonymous Anomaly [John S.],

Have been stricken with pneumonia for the past three weeks or so, and hence have been unable to summon up enough strength to read (or write or listen or talk or walk or even shuffle about). However, yesterday I found myself feeling comparatively chipper, and was finally able to get to your screenplay, Eden Summer.

Thank you so much for sending the script to me. I think it is a perfect portrait of how you live your life. A "Well done!"and a "Bravo!"are appropriate, would you say? I can see how you spent considerable time and effort, picking and choosing your details well, and given first class attention to your characters, which do indeed come alive.

I am happy for you that such a bright blue light danced into your life and sparkled for a while. Not everybody is fortunate enough to have that experience, and I am glad for you. Clearly, she was unforgettable.

Seems to me that it takes both courage and fortitude to write of your life as it is, "neither truly awake nor truly asleep,"existing at minimal levels of contact and involvement, arousal nullified by repugnance, passion stifled by priggish fear rationalized as morality or aesthetic elegance, at best expressed by "a nod of capitulation."

It is not easy to write an interesting film about an anonymous nonperson who lives his life in a notebook — to whom is he writing? And why? When life invites him to the dance, the most he can give in return is "an ambiguous glance,"perhaps a fleeting brush of a fingertip "as much from politeness as from desire."With "aggressive indifference"he evades all direct physical and psychological contact with life and inevitably returns to his "claustrophobic little cell,"where he will once again scribble in the ever present notebook. Indeed, "he wants to say more, but he is afraid. . .He keeps silent."And so goes his life. I think you have written of this life quite well, John, and you deserve respect for your honesty and courage and grace in the presentation.

The problem of getting a script like this out into the world is obvious. While our Vague Anonymous Anomaly anti-hero is interesting from a psychological point of view, paralyzed by fear of life and the incapacity to bear the burden of any sort of success, whether artistic or commercial or both, the question inevitably arises: Is he interesting in terms of commercial entertainment? It is not that the world of entertainment is "crap,"as you suggest. It is simply that films, books and mainstream music revolve about extroverted entertainment values — the usual conflict, violence, drama, hysteria, action based on rage, sex, betrayal, etc. What is the point of trying to fit our Anonymous Anomaly friend into entertainment contexts? Why write a film that is not rooted in entertainment values, and then indulge hopes that somebody will find it entertaining and worthy of risking millions of dollars on it? Is it not a self-deluding contradiction?

Very often — all too often, in fact — crap is successful in the marketplace. But not everything that is successful is crap. Condemning success (by whatever terms one wishes to define it) only serves to justify one's own fear of it. Psychologically paralyzed by the fear of success, one instinctively sees and avoids any gesture, thought, affirmation or creative act that might enable one to break out of the "claustrophobic little cell"and participate in the world — in its person-to-person relationships, in its sensual joy, in its laughter, sharing, hopes and energizing love. There is a dance going on. We are all invited. If we choose, we can learn how to join in — and without fear. Eden Summer knew this and extended her hand, hoping for a response that was considerably more vital and joy-filled than "a nod of capitulation,"a responsive touch that was much more than "polite."Can one blame her for leaving?

To have her become successful on her own terms at the end, but then have her look like a jaded death-mask, is understandable, of course. Suppose she was successful — and full of life, comfortable, happy, delighted with her popularity and wealth and the attention of glamorous lovers? One who is stultified by the fear of success simply cannot imagine such a thing. What would that do to his argument? He can't allow himself to acknowledge that people who are successful are successful because they are doing what they want to do, and the things they want to do are valued by the world at large. If they are entertainers, they naturally express themselves through entertainment values.

They are not "bad"or "corrupt"or "hard and dead"because they are successful. They are successful because they are not afraid of participating in the dance, and the things they do naturally are things to which people at large respond. If they have problems at the top, it is not because of success. It is because of their own psychological makeup. Some can handle it. Some cannot. But that part has nothing to do with success itself. Why does Eden Summer have to wind up a "death mask"? She could just as easily have become even more bright, happy, energetic, joyful, loving, imaginative and fulfilled, is that not so?

It seems to me an enormous contradiction, John, to be writing in an entertainment medium something that has nothing to do with entertainment. It may feel good to be rejected. Then you can sniff and walk away, taking the moral high-road, calling the business people "crap peddlers,"and salving one's wounds with heavy doses of self-righteousness, aesthetic superiority and arrogant contempt about a monstrous world that has no sensitivity, insight or understanding.

But sensitivity about what? Insight and understanding into what? Into a Vague Anonymous Anomaly who lives his life in a notebook? Indeed, they almost surely will have no sensitivity, insight or understanding when it comes to our "neither truly awake nor truly asleep"friend. His life simply has no place in the land of extroverted entertainment, violence, action, assertiveness, desire, aggression, etc. To put him there, and expect people to buy the script, and then feel superior because of its rejection, is only to continue a fear-of-success game that has been going on for a long time, has it not?

Seems to me that one can keep on writing without hope of being published. By no means is publishing the only value. One can dive into the notebook and never come out. Nothing wrong with that, is there? One can spend years in a cell, eschewing technological advances (such as a computer), using outmoded writing tools (like a rickety old typewriter) to construct a thousand fantasies. One can pile up manuscripts and take great pride in having written them.

Above all, one can enjoy the writing process itself, not as a means of communication, but as a means of expression and as an exploration of one's own infinitely complex psyche — as a thrilling, delightful, often psychologically dangerous journey into one's own being. And at the deepest levels, far beneath superficial entertainment values, you are the world and the world is you. Explore yourself, and you explore the world; explore the world through writing, and you explore yourself.

By throwing out the whole notion of connecting with the commercial world, one frees oneself from these nagging and sometimes brutal conflicts. One no longer has to deal with any of the questions in this letter. The notion of success and failure, of writing to publish or get produced, of making efforts to connect, of trying to join the ranks of published writers while still maintaining one's honesty and integrity, of trying to fit one's Anomalous Self into a world that simply does not and cannot care — all of that disappears. There is freedom in self-acceptance, freedom in simply finding out where one does fit — and then enjoying that place, style, time, energy.

As long as writing is fun, then write. If you have found a level where you get published, too, then great. Do that as well (in the script you suggested there were magazine writings that kept you going). If you absolutely need to try to force yourself and your perspectives and values into the commercial world, then great — but that can be as draining as it is futile. There comes a time when heroic perseverance transmutes into neurotic masochism. After a certain point, it is simply a waste of time, is it not?

That is, the game of writing/trying to publish/getting rejected/feeling superior is repetition gone mad. Adamantly and temperamentally unwilling to include commercial values, you cannot expect publication. You can settle for moral/aesthetic superiority, of course, but that kind of repetition is ultimately as empty as it is unnourishing.

Meanwhile, my friend, I wish you well. I respect your perseverance in all things literary, and respect your courage in displaying your life with honesty, vivid imagery, integrity. I'm glad you got to see Eden Summer's bedazzling blue-light sparkle when she danced in your life. The memory of that diamond-glitter in itself makes life worthwhile.

Keep on keepin' on, ol' buddy,
All the best from Sonia, too
Lee

On Psychological Change
And
Spiritual Transformation: Freud or Buddha?

February 17, 2001

Hi, John S.,

Thank you so much for your kind response. Your understanding, insight and gracious handling of the various items I heaped on your psychological plate is as impressive as it is receptive and reflective. I greatly respect the way you received and digested the various points I made, and am grateful to you for replying to me with intelligence and consideration.

I am with you 100% regarding the matter of "it felt very necessary for me to get Eden Summer down on paper."When all is said and done, there is no other valid reason for writing that even comes close to it. Write whatever must be written, and let the rest take care of itself. I heartily applaud your perseverance and dedication. Indeed, "move on and keep on and rave on,"and let the Boy Scouts take the hindmost.

Perhaps my deepest concern is not a personal concern about either you or me, but about a certain question that nags me to no end. Why do some people change, grow, develop and evolve, while others do not? Why do some people remain locked in their conditioning (religious belief systems, dogma, handed-down notions of gods, goddesses, heavens, hells, saviors, etc.; political values, Democratic, Republican, Social, Communist, whatever; nationalism, racism and all the other isms), while others seek and find psychological, spiritual and other guides who help liberate them from the chains of Christianity or Mohammedanism, etc., political egocentricity, geo-political isolationism and other psycho-spiritual concepts, images and emotion-laden baggage that keep them separated, in conflict, imprisoned, deaf, dumb and blind?

Why are some people capable of dying every moment to the psychological accumulation of past imagery, while others remain totally hypnotized and shackled by it? Why can some people free themselves from deep-seated patterns of psychological fears and drop mechanical behavior so they can daily greet the new and daily create not only new works of art, but new lives, new ways of seeing, hearing, feeling, perceiving, behaving, relating? Why do some remain brainwashed and imprisoned by the past and their conditioned mechanical thoughts, while others seek and find and utilize tools of perception that help them escape into creative psychological and spiritual authenticity?

In talking with Sonia, I realize that I am beginning to waver on this question of change. For over 25 centuries now, enlightened masters from Buddha and Jesus to Osho and Krishnamurti and Ken Wilber have been showing and telling us how to accomplish these changes. And, to a person, they insist that it can be done, not by believing in a savior or a book or a methodology, but by certain kinds of direct experience that produces insight, understanding, clarity, love, compassion and inclusive joy. They insist that they are not exceptional; they are not "freaks of nature”; they are human, and they have done it, If they can do it, we can do it too. And so they walked, and talked, and lived their lives and left us their extraordinary insights and teachings, the wisdom of the masters.

But I look around, not only at others, but at myself, and ask how many people do I know personally who have grown beyond the age of, say, 14 or 15? How many people do I know who have either expanded their views or altered them during the course of their lives? How many do I know who have actually evolved from one level of consciousness to another, who have left their parents and the parental context and its values behind, and climbed the "ladder"of consciousness from self-centeredness to all embracing compassion? How many do I know who have actually evolved from their early reference points (whether Jesus or Shakespeare or Thoreau) into new domains (whether Buddha, Walt Whitman or Osho)? How many people of my acquaintance think or talk or act differently than when they first told me their story 20 or 30 years ago? Has anything at all changed? Or do they remain fundamentally the same, with a modification here or there, perhaps a shift of furniture (but still the same chairs and tables in the same psychological room)?

I find myself leaning toward the conclusion that very few people make any fundamental changes whatsoever. Even with psychotherapy, for example, they may still be saddled with a sense of self-loathing and inadequacy so profound that they will forever remain terrified of even the prospect of success of any kind. The fear of success is but the tip of an enormous iceberg that consists of primal conditioning that goes so deep it is virtually impossible to reveal, understand and dissolve, even with professional help. Freud himself said nobody changes. Nobody can change, he insisted. At the very most, we can become only normally abnormal and conventionally unhappy.

Even when people dare to pick up a book by a radically inspired, brilliant, insightful psychological/spiritual liberator such as Osho, do they allow themselves to follow through, get deeply involved with the readings, apply the teachings to themselves, do the work, and escape the bondage of their conditioned perceptions and belief systems? Almost nobody moves out and beyond what they already know. Hardly anybody steps outside of their own room or their own notebook or their own rigidly structured behavioral patterns. Was Freud right?

In spite of assurances down through the ages from the geniuses of higher consciousness that we can all liberate ourselves, not through belief systems but through direct experience, almost nobody actually does it. Almost nobody learns, nobody grows, nobody changes. There are exceptions, which makes the situation incredibly interesting, but they are few and far between. Nearly everybody remains locked in conditioned images about themselves and others, driven primarily by fear, which produces either inertia or greed, envy, and ruthless ambition, none of which expedites growth, change, evolutionary psycho-spiritual development or creativity at the most profound level of the essential Self. We remain asleep in cocoons and never see the light of who or what we could be and can be (and what, in fact, we already are — if only we awakened and realized it).

So I go back and forth. Yes, it's worthwhile. Yes, change can happen. Everybody just has to go his or her own way and his or her own pace. Krishnamurti sometimes felt as if we were singing to the deaf — but he didn't give up. He kept on singing. I feel that way — only I think the one who is deaf is myself, not just others. Back and forth. Yes, we can and will. No, we can't and don't.

Ah, well. No need to worry. We all do the best we can with what we have. More, less, none of it matters, right? Maybe the only thing worthwhile is acceptance and celebration. Many is the wise person who has said that. Perhaps becoming is just an ego trip. Just be. And love.

Maybe so, maybe so.

Keep-keep-keepin' on, John. All the best of life, love and laughter to you and yours.

Sonia sends her love, too,

Lee

Miles Davis

September 8, 2002

Hi, John S.,

Wonderful you're into Miles!

I can't say enough about him and his many musical phases. A truly evolutionary artist, one of the few who explored, not only within any given area, but within widely different conceptual zones, many of which he invented himself. He was one of Tim Buckley's role models, a deep, rich source of creative inspiration, courage, and confidence. Miles never stopped growing, continued learning, and continued inventing and exploring to the end.

The ESP period you mentioned was one of Miles' best and most popular. With Herbie Hancock, piano; Wayne Shorter, sax; Ron Carter, bass; and Tony Williams, drums, Miles kicked up a storm, not only with ESP, but with Miles Smiles, Miles in the Sky, Milestones, Sorcerer, Nefertitti.

With Filles de Kilimanjaro, he began phasing into a new period, with more space, simpler chord changes, extended compositions, less busy-ness, more atmosphere, great stuff. That period culminated and terminated with one of my favorite albums, In A Silent Way (which became one of Tim's all-time favorite albums, too).

No matter which phase you check into, you can't go wrong. Miles' early phases were great (one of my favorites here was Walkin' and later on, Kind of Blue, an all-time classic) and his phase with Coltrane and Cannonball Adderly was great. This quintet with Herbie was one of his Everests. The phase following In A Silent Way upset a lot of people, but there is great stuff in there, too, notably Bitches Brew (w/John McLaughlin on guitar) and Tribute to Jack Johnson (Miles' personal favorite; also with McLaughlin). Then some extremely abstract free-form albums with Chick Corea and Keith Jarrett, notably On the Corner, At the Fillmore, and Live/Evil that pissed off just about everybody — too abstract, too cerebral, people complained, whatever happened to "My Funny Valentine"?

Of the albums up to that point, some of my favorites include Porgy and Bess and Sketches of Spain (w/orchestra arranged by Gil Evans), Kind of Blue, Filles de Kilimanjaro, In a Silent Way, Jack Johnson.

In 1974, Miles put out a first-class atmospheric album entitled Get Up With It, a tribute to Duke Ellington, which included the mournful track, "He Loved Him Madly," an album and a composition that deeply moved Tim, and moves me to this day.

In the mid-seventies, Miles came up with one of the most intense, powerful, I dare say magnificent groups in his whole career — Agharta and Pangea emerged out of this period. I would not recommend them to just any Miles fan, because they are far, far removed from the '65-'69 quintet or the earlier acoustic jazz groups that so many people loved. Agharta and Pangea are heavily electronic; the rhythms are hard-driving, rock-oriented, fierce; Miles does not play conventionally melodic trumpet lines, but speaks and sings more like a voice or an animal (which drove critic Leonard Feather up a wall, but thrilled me when I heard this group at the Troubadour in LA); and the music flows in one continuous roaring stream, punctuated by sharp sudden breaks. Not for everybody by any means. Too intense, abstract, contemporary, unrelenting.

Miles' later albums also set people off. Everybody wanted Miles to stick with "Love for Sale" or Kind of Blue concepts, which Miles had left behind billions of years ago. Now he was tripping off into commercial music, with funky beats and pop song sensibilities. Instead of praising Miles for having the ability to make commercial albums as well as those earlier great "art" works, people damned him as a sell-out. However, one album during this later period stands out to me. It is not funky or pop-oriented. It's more abstract, very contemporary, and, in my view, one of his best, as well as one of my favorites. It's called Aura, composed/arranged by a guy named Palle Mikkelborg. Lots of instruments, wide, spacious, harmonic tapestries, abstract solos within the arrangements, exotic, contemporary, in some places bordering on modern classical music.

As I said above, you can't go wrong with Miles. True, almost nobody listens with open ears. They listen only selectively, picking this or that "favorite" period. That is certainly okay, but they immediately go wrong when they proceed to damn the other stylistic phases because they don't sound like their "favorite" one. Miles and every other artist who dares to change, grow and evolve has to suffer that kind of moronic condemnation. Picasso got the same kind of pretentious, stupid judgements dumped on him. So did Rodin, James Joyce, Henry Miller, and rare pop artists such as my dear old friend, Tim Buckley. Albert Einstein said it best: "Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds."

I like the idea of checking out the albums (perhaps by going on line, Amazon.com, Miles Davis, sampling various tracks from different albums; not the greatest way, but available nevertheless), acquiring albums you might like, hanging out with them as one might hang out with a friend, listening to them often as you absorb them, then following leads, suggestions from friends who know what they are talking about, reading a few articles, whatever. You know, exploring.

Each time you find a zone, place, time period, stylistic phase that you like in Miles' music, then delve into it more deeply. It doesn't matter whether somebody else dislikes like that phase. MILES liked it, and that is good enough. The only question relevant to a good listener is, "Exactly what was it Miles found beautiful, worth while, deeply moving?" Seeking that answer by listening is a joyful journey. The A-ha! experience is a thrill. It opens new doors every time.

I know you didn't ask for all of this information, John, but, hey, Miles has been one of my favorite guys for a long time. If there is anything I can offer that might encourage to you explore him in depth, then I've done something worthwhile.

Interesting, although I never got to interview Miles while I was writing for Down Beat, I did interview Herbie Hancock (two or three times), Tony Williams (a cover story), Ron Carter, Wayne Shorter, Chick Corea (two major features with Chick), and Keith Jarrett (not for DB, but for the L.A. Free Press).
A friend of mine recently said, "As you ramble on through life, brother, whatever be your goal, keep your eye upon the doughnut, and not upon the hole."
_
All the best,
Lee

Steppenwolf

April 20, 01

Hi, John S.,

No question about it. If Eden "must live out its life as something for the screen,"then so be it. Of course it must. I was only making a suggestion about perhaps putting it into the form of a novel, because a writer can be so much more introspective in that form. But Eden could be a terrific movie.

Just this morning, I got to thinking about you and our recent telephone conversation, as I am re-reading one of Herman Hesse's great novels, Steppenwolf. Just completed the section early on in the book, entitled "The Treatise,"and will be re-reading it tomorrow. In my comments to you about the "outsider"I don't think I mentioned this book, and it is one of the all-time great outsider works. I heartily recommend it to you, ol' buddy.

You may already have read it, of course. Even if you have, I would urge you to re-read it, as it so perfectly perceives the outsider dilemma, of being drawn to a bourgeois lifestyle on the one hand even while feeling revulsion for it; and drawn to the superior, outsider, creative/artistic, independent, ultra-individualized "wolf"instincts on the other hand — even while feeling revulsion for it, too. Both sides of himself are in conflict with each other (with Hesse's pointing out how the notion of "two"in conflict is a gross simplification — we are not one, nor two, but manifold). And he finds the whole of himself disconnected from society at large — a prisoner inside a self that yearns for inner unity and inner/outer connections, all of which seems impossible.

Anyway, I was thinking about you and Prisoners, and your thoughts about exploring some of the themes we've been talking about. Hope you look into it and maybe take the plunge. Longest journey, first step, etc.

All's well here. In spite of feeling intolerably isolated from the realms of those who deem things either "commercial"or "not commercial,"I tolerate them and their world anyway, and persist in setting fingers to the keyboard. Hopeless diddling, of course, but it keeps the juices flowing, which seems to be the most important thing — vitalizing daily life. I dwell in a kind of sustained underground fury, watching others see the light of day in the publishing world, while I am sidelined. I see my own ideas given light and money and recognition some five-eight years after I first propose them. When I raise my hand, they say, "Not commercial. Shut up."When others raise their hand down the line for the same insight, they hear, "It's commercial. We love you. Give us more."

I wish it were only because my writing is inferior, but when I look at what gets published, I rarely have that feeling. In fact, my modes of expression seem to be as good or better than most, certainly worthy of being read by others. Ah, but alas, etc. On the one hand, I want to swear a lot and launch grenades at thos "mediocre minds" Einstein referred to. On the other, I remember the Buddhas, compassion, understanding, detachment, integrity, love, harmony, unity, blah-blah-blah.

Moving on,

Lemme know, yes?

Lubs,

Lee

Suffering Is Easy: Billy R

April 4, 2002

Hi, Ol' Buddy,

Very kind of you to send me a Xerox of the Billy R photo, 1962. He sure looked good, didn't he? I greatly appreciate your gesture, and thank you for it.

The picture set me to thinking. If you would be so kind, let me share some of these thoughts with you. As you know, I've known a lot of Billy R's — Tim, Fred Neil, Jimi, Janis, hundreds of others either directly or indirectly. They all know how to do one thing well. They know how to suffer. Whatever music comes out of it is purely a by-product of natural talent, and that talent is beaten and ultimately destroyed by their love of suffering, sadness, misery and pain. Everybody loves the pain, the angst, the wallowing. They claim they don't, but in fact they do. Feeling bad feels good.

I was that way too, so don't get me wrong. Don't think I'm on some kind of moral high ground, looking down a Puritanical nose at our lost, tormented and tortured poets, singers, dancers, jugglers and clowns. All I am saying is, Billy loved it, just as I did, just as the others did (and still do, and always will, forever), and he never had the stuff to get past it.

I feel enormous heart-wrenching compassion for all of us. At the same time, I wonder why don't more of us get tired of it, sick of it, bored with it? Why don't more of us stop sacrificing our talent and our art, brutalizing it, exploiting it just so we can get loaded and laid one more time? Why don't more of us respect it and treasure it and nourish it so we can give more beauty, hope, love and strength to this miserable human race? Why don't more of us have guts enough to stop whining, mewling, puling and destroying ourselves, and do something honest, courageous and creative with our lives? See what I mean?

God knows, I've shed enough tears for myself and Billy and Tim and the rest of us. I've plumbed the depths of that overly-romanticized so-called "dark side,"and after exploring it at length I found it merely common, tedious, repetitive, banal and highly over-rated. Everybody does that stuff. Music, movies, TV and novels base their whole trip on it. There's nothing new about it, or in it, nothing whatsoever, and yet how many Billy's of the world have fortitude enough to pull out of it? How many take the rare, uncommon, exciting, original and extremely difficult road to mental health, creative living, artistic productivity? How many have guts enough to stop hating themselves and destroying their talent, and to turn the whole thing around, transforming it into light, love, laughter, compassion, and beauty that celebrates the best and highest of the human spirit instead of the worst and most degraded? What is the perennial obsession with the tedium of prolonged and sloppy suicide, and the rationalization of it as "poetic heroism”? Doesn't anybody see it clearly? Or are nearly all who play this game doomed to waste their talent, youth and sanity, before lying broken and battered and wheezing on stained sheets in some god-forsaken slime green hospital room somewhere.

Suffering is easy. Boozer and druggie pain is the ultimate selfishness. Self-destruction is stupid, wasteful, and heinously disrespectful of life itself. Billy's life, and the life I lived for so many years, and the life Tim and Fred and Jimi and the rest of them died from is nothing more than the Great Lie, perpetrated by corporations who sell dead poets, dead madmen writers, agonized musicians and volatile youthful morbidity in all its forms. The so-called "poetic rebellion"of the Kerouacs and Dean Moriarties, Billy Roberts and Lee Underwoods and the rest of them, is a stupid neurotic fantasy.

It doesn't take courage to stay in it or to murder one's talent or wind up a burnt out drooling cripple in some last-stand sanitarium. To the contrary, it takes courage to look it in the eye, see it for the deluded sham that it is, and then make the heroic effort to pull out of it. It takes courage to affirm life with enough strength and conviction to get off the booze and the drugs and the underground music lifestyle. It takes courage to say Goodbye to the easy, familiar, comfortable, romanticized "dark zone,"and get one's ass into gear on the hard road to change, growth, evolution and rebirth.

Self-delusion is a coward's trick, perpetrated on everyone, most of all on one's self. The journey of self-understanding and self-realization is the heroic venture, a journey almost none of the so-called "rebels"ever manage to even begin, much less complete. Talent is easy. It comes free with the genes. Living for love, courage and creativity is a bitch. It takes work to transform talent into productive genius. Burn-outs are a dime a dozen.

That doesn't mean I don't feel compassion for my compatriots. I do. And I love them. But we could use a few more Kris Kristoffersons, Joe Pass's, Lee Underwoods, a few more people who have visited hell, checked it out, then had enough love of life left to summon up the strength and sustained effort to fulfill themselves and their talents instead of beating themselves up until they die an early and usually ugly, pathetic, wasteful death.

Thanks again, ol' buddy. Appreciate the picture, and you, and the gesture of sending it. I also appreciate the thoughts the picture generated. Thank you for that too.
Much lubs,
Lee

The Buddhas

March 17, 2002

Hi, John X,

As often happens, I found myself thinking about your e-mail, in this case the "donkeys carrying loads of books. . ." with masses of humanity "singing out. . .climbing down, moving away from the do-as-I-say pulpits of the Mounts."

In wrestling with a variety of interpretations — for which stimulation I warmly thank you — I found myself noting that "the world mess" you speak of has been with us for millennia, as have the multitudes of causes which we are free to defend or oppose. We all do the best we can with whatever we have, and, indeed, it's a good thing to support whichever cause contributes to liberation — women's rights, human rights, animal rights, anti-war protests, local and global environmental concerns, etc.

However, I can't help noticing that defenses and attacks tend to increase division, amplify conflicts, generate more madness, destruction, chaos — in other words, the "messy" world we live in now is very often a product of people who give their loyalty to causes, while refusing to look at themselves and take responsibility for their individual quality and level of consciousness. Maybe that can't be helped. As I just noted, we do whatever we can with whatever we have. And maybe supporting this or that cause against the other causes gives a sense of relief, a sense of participation, a sense of doing at least something to help the causes we believe in against the causes somebody else believes in.

But maybe we should not only support causes that liberate consciousness in a multiplicity of forms, but should also be paying equal attention to inner development. It's this dimension that I see sadly lacking, and it's a dimension that seems crucial to me in terms of accomplishing in fact what conflicting causes wish to accomplish in principle.

It's wonderful to have "members of world choruses" "speaking out, singing out" for causes, but has that "singing out" made even a single change for the better? This is not to attack you or your view. It's simply looking into the question. There is lots of noise, that's for sure, and lots of cathartic sound and fury, but has that noise lifted the "veil" that has covered our life "since first cognitive lights?" Maybe it has and in numerous instances — including an end to institutional slavery, the right to vote, women's liberation, on-going emancipation of oppressed minorities of all sorts, help for animals, forests, ocean, air, etc. But masses of people "singing out" doesn't seem to me to deal with the root of the issues, with the fundamental dynamics of practical change.

In themselves, politics divide and destroy. Conflicts remain, and they multiply. The "mess" gets worse and worse, does it not? Until there is a significant developmental alteration of human consciousness — the ways in which we think, feel, perceive and evaluate things from inside out, from internal perception to external action — can we expect the wars of causes to cease? Until we attain unity consciousness, universal compassion and pragmatic cooperation among individuals in significant numbers, can we attain unity itself? I don't know. Seems to me each one of us has a job: to change the world. And we can do that effectively only by transforming unconsciousness into consciousness, conditioned thinking into liberated, selfless, nonegoic choices.

I guess there are hoards of "donkeys carrying loads of books" out there, if by that you mean scholars, technicians and others who read merely for information, not transformation, and priests carting backbreaking loads of scriptures and traditions on their shoulders while remaining self-serving power-hungry hypocrites. They think knowledge is knowing, and it is not. They think information is transformation, and it is not.

But there are other people who read in order to connect deeply with the buddhas of humanity. It seems to me the alteration of consciousness depends upon what we look at, whom we allow into our minds and hearts, the quality of mind and soul we incorporate into the depths and heights of our own being.

Except for books and the arts, where can we go to find Buddha, Osho, Krishnamurti, Ken Wilber, Han Shan, Jesus, Socrates, Lao Tzu and others who have invited us to rise out of the misery, darkness, madness, pain and confusion of the valleys in which we are raised, conditioned, programmed and usually terminally imprisoned? Is it better to "climb down" rather than "climb up"? It seems to me nearly everybody is in love with the descent into degradation, conflict, neurosis, psychosis. Is it better to jump into the "world mess" and take sides and contribute to the madness, rather than look into our own psyches and souls and evolve to a level and quality of consciousness that speaks from the heart of love, compassion, and perhaps above all, wisdom? That takes a lot of work, time, dedication, fortitude. Who is willing to do that? The buddhas are, and they urge us to do the same.

Until we have courage enough to look deeply and honestly into ourselves and face ourselves directly and penetrate those conditionings we cling to so desperately, how can we hope to add something to the world that alters it for the better, however simply or mightily? Liberating causes are wonderful, yes. But how about personal, direct, immediate, on-going evolution up the spectrum of consciousness? On a practical level, bedrock action, we can't change what we do until we change what we are.

Maybe the buddhas speak from bully pulpits atop the Mounts, ordering people to "do as I say," but it seems otherwise to me (perhaps you meant the scholars/priests/politicians, not the buddhas). I think the awakened ones give their lives disinterestedly, without ego, in service to the evolution of human consciousness. Instead of telling people to adjust to the socio-economic machine and fit in like cogs, they offer gateways to psychological and spiritual freedom — awareness rooted in Unity Consciousness.

Of course, they usually receive for their compassion, brilliance, insight, and wisdom, only a spear through the heart, a bullet through the head or a flaming pyre in the town square. The great mass is as stupid as it is violent, as terrified of choice as it is "decent" in its moral and intellectual hypocrisy. These "decent" ones fiercely resist awakening, insight, growth, creativity, evolution from one level to another, liberation from their conditioned psychological prisons, and all efforts to help them move out of their inert mind-dead torpor. History is strewn with the corpses of the beautiful ones crucified by "decent" people (and equally cluttered with the venerating statues those same "decent" people erect to them afterwards).

As I think about it, I could become discouraged or cynical, but when I look more deeply into it I see that their work is never wasted. These flowers of humanity retain their beauty and relevance. Even if centuries removed from us, they remain here, now, in the living present, in books, calling us out of our chaotic, murderous darkness, upward to the light of our own being. Each one is an example, not of tyrannical dictatorship, but of the realization and fulfillment of the highest (i.e., most inclusive) level of consciousness that is already an integral element of the human condition. They wake up, speak to us of our inherent potential, and invite us to wake up too. Personally, I see no reason to "climb down." Are we not already in the dungeon?

Seems to me we could read a few vitalized books, listen to some great music, check out a few paintings, connect with some of those who have ascended into awareness, love, compassion, cooperation, Unity Consciousness. We cannot ignore the world. Out of compassion, we must to some extent observe politicians, priests, conflicting causes and all the mindless violence, brutality and degradation that goes with them. But can we not also pay attention to the buddhas and bring them into our awareness too?

I often wonder why there is so much attachment to the Evening News and to the hideous imagery in films and music. Why is there such an obsession with power, violence, psychosis, and destruction, and so little interest in the geniuses of all ages, including our own? Why don't we more often hail the bright lights of humanity who have celebrated the best in humankind instead of the worst? It is out of profound compassion for human suffering that these shining ones have spoken and given their lives. It is out of unbounded love that they have fought stupidity and inertia, and shared their intelligence, insight, guidelines, information, methodologies, and impassioned realizations with us.

Unfortunately, we have not paid attention to them. We have not even tried to follow their suggestions, insights, directives. We have not made any widespread, significant effort to ascend to those high climes where we emerge from the gloom, misery and madness of the shadowed valleys, into the radiant light that is within all of us — if only we were willing to look inward and take that Odyssean exploratory journey.

If we were to embrace the buddhas, listen to them, incorporate them, allow them to work on us, help us grow, help us transform ourselves from stupid clods of mud into glistening consciousness, then we would not need causes, or follow them, or fight them, but would find ourselves above and beyond yes/no conflicts, in the realm where we can stretch our wings wide enough to embrace all of humankind, all sentient beings, matter itself, in love, respect, mutual appreciation, shared creativity and pragmatic cooperation in service to all, for all, of all.

If we ascended to the point where we LIKED peace and love and creativity, we could live in a world BASED on peace and love and creativity. It starts with our relationship to the buddhas and our own interiority.

Let me thank you, John, for once again providing a spark that has provoked something of a fire that has been helpful (at least to me). I guess the benefit lies in the fact that I now see and know these things — which does not mean I have patience with other peoples' malice, greed or stupid blindness. It means I accept the fact that each newborn child starts at square one; evolves through several stages (sensory, imagistic, conceptual, egoic) before coming to a leaping off place: a leap from mind and its verbal-conceptual-pragmatic domain into post-rational selfless all embracing transpersonal buddha consciousness.

Whether we take that leap or not remains up to us. It is always there, available. Some will take it. Most will not. Those few who do take it join the buddhas in light and love and compassion. From there, they give what they can to fellow travelers who are open enough to receive, grow, change, evolve. Those in the forefront cannot stop their own evolution to please the suffering ones left behind in the valleys; all they can do is beckon to them, inviting them, offering their words, gestures and lives in service to the journey itself and to those who choose to take it.

After the awakened ones are gone, maybe a few of their words remain in books, which become the only way we living ones can connect with them in our brief lives. It is the only way we can let them speak to us, bring them into ourselves, let them do their transformational work. Those who enjoy the company of the buddhas know the realms I am talking about. Those who fear the buddhas condemn them and the receivers/readers/listeners who appreciate them. Such is the way of the world. It doesn't matter if one has to travel this road alone; the journey itself is thrilling enough and immensely beneficial. It is transformational creativity in the thoughts and actions of daily life.

Anyway, John, I wander along in the midst of these thoughts, hardly bringing you the kinds of chuckles and distractions that might make for a more lighthearted e-mail. Thanks for taking time enough to swim through the waters, and for passing along the initial stimulation I found in your e-mail. This is simply as a stream of consciousness epistle sparked by some of your imagery, shared with you in the spirit of friendship. From this side, it's been fun. Hope it has been fun for you too. Always good hearing from you.

Best,

Lee