The battle within

There's another blog I read of a friendly acquaintance whom I see once in a while. He's a great guy with the same problems we all face every day. Life's course.


He wrote an entry that talked about a guy who went into the mountains and sat with Buddhists. And while he was there for other reasons, he soon started believing in what the Buddhists believed.


In the end, the resistance to change is futile. We are all influenced by our surroundings and as such, I wrote this reply to his blog entry.




The war inside each of us is the greatest battle of all.


Some people keep their battles inside, not bottled up. Just internal. Meditating and medicating themselves through life's course. Learning as we go, until we expire and move on to the next light.


Sadly, there are a whole lot of people who expose their battles for the world to see. Their war is fought on the outside, and unfortunately takes a few casualties with them, the ones they hurt around them as their mace of life turns around in circles. The carnage wrecking everyone else's life in their path.


There are things in life we can choose and there are things we can't avoid. The last 7/8ths of my life have been clobbered my people around me swinging their mace around and taking me with them. I'm on my own ride now. The first time in life where I know where I'm heading but I don't know where I'll end up.


Cheers
pipsqeek

Haven't I met you before?

Déjà vu. It means Already seen in French. is the experience of feeling sure that one has witnessed or experienced a new situation previously (an individual feels as though an event has already happened or has happened in the recent past), although the exact circumstances of the previous encounter are uncertain.

This was taken from wikipedia.

Why bring it up? Because I'm a fellow who experiences this on a daily basis. Sometimes it's subtle. Sometimes it is so profound that I almost know what the next word muttered will be.

I experienced a profound instance of Déjà vu the other day. I was at a Singer/Songwriter competition with my friend Craig. We perform a duo act full of original, modern, Australia, folk music. There were many other performers there that evening. And while I'm quite active in the music scene in Sydney, I'm not as well connected as people are lead to believe. To top things off, the other performers there that night were totally unfamiliar. I had never met them in my life.

Yet, when staring at the lovely Renae, I swear we had met before. I knew her and her face was vividly familiar. But how? She was from a town 300 kms away. A town I've passed through but never stayed in. My circle of friends, even the ones up past her way are not part of her circle of friends. So how can she look so familiar. So familiar in fact that I swear I know her. I'd bet my house on it, I'm as sure as day I know her.

Another performer that got up to play was Ben from Narabeen. I've never met him either. I don't travel to Narabeen. It's just not a place I go to. Ever. Yet there he was, and I'm staring at him too. Trying to figure out why he looks like someone I know too well.

Renae ended up sitting at our table and my wife spoke to her. We still don't know how I know her but we exchanged business cards and got chatting. We still have no idea. But either way, she's a nice, young and pretty girl with a great attitude. It's refreshing to see there are younger people out there that aren't bored, glued to the TV. They're out there performing live music and going out of their own way to do it.

Ben was the best sounding person on the evening. Better than us. Better than the guy who won first place, better than the guys who won second place, and better than the trio that won third. In fact, when Ben got up on stage and started to play and sing, on his own with his guitar, it was as if the stage lit up. He really made the place come alive. With previous performs just playing by numbers, as I like to call it. It's when you go on autopilot. When you just go in there, play your bit and walk off.

Ben and I exchanged business cards also, and I like how he did it too. Japanese style.

This is where he hands you his card with both hands and bows. You bow while you take the card with both hands. Nothing is said, you inspect the card as a sign of respect, place it safely in your wallet and then continue the conversation. I've always loved this greeting, though never stepped foot in Japan, I found it yet another familiar and comforting experience to have taken part in an official exchange of cards.

I see a lot of cool experiences with Ben coming soon. So watch this space.

From all that in one night, the last few days since then has had me wandering around working at the music school, which I'll have photos of soon. Teaching music and talking to people, all the while thinking about Renae and Ben. Two people I connected with and somehow have already met.

Maybe it was a past life. Maybe it's just that they're such cool, laid back easy going, fun loving musicians that I just got along with them so well that everything just clicked.

Or maybe it's what I've read about Déjà vu. It's that you subconciously want to meet people like this that when it happens in real life, you feel as though it has happened before because you've almost or perhaps have dreamt about it.

Either way, I like the idea I once invented about Déjà vu....

... Meeting someone for the first time that you have a familiar feeling about is because you have already met them once before, maybe 100 years ago, maybe 1000 years ago. And in that life, you were both musicians, perhaps you both even met in the same exact spot you met in 100 years ago, when the club use to be a factory making glass jars. Or 1000 years ago in a battle for territory, maybe you were just two kids who met on the field to play.

A lesson in Language - a prompt from Dizzy Dick

Who's Dizzy? This guy.

Dizzy wonders about stuff, much in the same way I do. He asked me to write something up about languages, a topic he covered not long ago because my comment on it was worthy.

I guess it was, so here's a story about languages.

English, being a language was my strongest subject in school. For years I argued my way into the top classes. I enjoyed English because it intrigued me how, when and why things were the way they were. Someone had to have figured it out. Someone had to have written the rule book. Starting with a capitol letter, punctuation and so on.

The least used characters in spoken languages are the colon and semi-colon. Most people don't know where and how to use them.

I knew in school. I also had no issues differentiating between the words "There", "Their" and "They're" and all the other words that sound exactly the same but are spelt differently and mean something different.

Don't confuse me with someone of intelligence. While I know the difference between the three words, I don't know what that difference is called. I also don't know what synonyms, antonyms, nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc are.

Probably because I was never taught it. And there lies the problem. The people that don't know the difference between there, their and they're were never taught it either.

So it's pretty fair, and stupidly obvious of me to say we don't know anything we haven't been taught.

Fair enough.

But why is Wednesday spelt the way it's spelt?

Why is there a silent "K" in knife, know, knee?

These were questions I asked in school. But no teacher had the answer. I was told to be quite and stop disrupting the class. I was also told a host of other words which I won't go into today.

Words are a funny thing. And that's only in English. There are words in other languages that don't exist. But they do in English.

Other languages don't have the problem of having three words sounding exactly the same but meaning different things. However, they do have an issue with the same word having different meanings when used in certain context, different context.

Yep, languages as a whole are pretty poorly designed. And that doesn't even take into account how the young kids of today speak English, using acronyms my generation invented for speaking on the Internet like "WTF, CBF, LOL, ROFL" and so on, now used in real conversation with people face to face.

Some people say that the youth of today are degrading the English language. As someone over 30, who speaks English "properly", I'd be quick to agree. But I don't and I can't.

I'll explain why. It's very simple actually. Think about this next time you shake your head at the illiterate and broken speech of some young hoodlum. Imagine what Shakespeare would think of your "proper" English and how degrading and illegible it is.

Languages change, some new ones can be invented, while there are cases of other languages disappearing, while some languages are based on older ones, they are seldom the same these days, and will be share less commonality in the future.

The truth is, language morphs, it's allowed to. What was spoken as little as 200 years ago is considered "funny". What we speak today will be read in ancient history and spoken of as a "funny" language. And what their ancestors read and hear will be considered "funny".

When you break it down further, and I'm going to hurt your brain for a moment... you'll realise that all language is a series of silly sounds someone invented. How on Earth we comprehend these silly sounds while not being able to understand others (ie: other languages) makes me wonder why there's such a difference at all. Regardless of how different our characters may be from English to Arabic, from Chinese to Armenian, we all have the same sounds. But the German word "Ausfart" to me means "Australian Fart" in German actually means an Entry or Exit point. And while I see humour in "Exit" point. It is furthest away from a fart, considering you'll see a sign displaying this word in Germany at nearly every freeway exit.

But when you break it down, the letter "A" has the same sound in German as it does in English. Following the "U" and the "S" there's nothing unusual there. And the rest of the word "fart". I just wanted to say that word. But seriously, again.... there's nothing unusual there. In fact, each character is pronounced pretty much as it would be in the English language.

Right... Well, I'm going to stop now because my brain is starting to hurt.

Cheerio! :)

Stranger things have happened

I'm sure everyone experiences a point in their lives when you sit up and go "whao!".

I had an experience like that last night. When I told my wife, she just shrugged it off like it happens to her every day. Anyway, I'll get to the story.

Yesterday was Friday, and when I looked at my calendar, I had a ton of stuff to do. But once the working day was over, all I had to do was pack the car with me musical instruments and head over to the studio for rehearsals and also auditions.

Since our singer is in Melbourne and we have had to fly him up for every gig, it has made performing for this project rather expensive. At the same time, our bouzouki player could not longer commit to the project and had to leave.

But the show must go on, and well... it kinda didn't for a few months. Five to be precise. When we got back together, we were all rusty. But that was over a month ago now, and we're back on form.

Being that we're back on top of it all, it was time to start looking for a local singer and maybe another bouzouki player. Bouzouki players all seem to have a similar trait, unorganised, non-committal. So we have put that idea to bed for now, and decided to see if we could find another musician to make up for it, with a different instrument.

No luck, however we did find a young kid who plays African Djembe. He's a whipper snapper. But he plays well. He doesn't get our jokes though. Either that or he doesn't find our immature sense of humour funny. After his first audition with us, he was thinking that perhaps this music was out of his league. So before he left, I told him about how when I first listened to the music, I thought "Oh shit, what have I got myself into?" I told him that my wife said "Well, you wanted a challenge, stop complaining now that one has come along. Get in there and take up the challenge." She was right. Hate that.

So far, the story is pretty ordinary. Nothing unusual there. Big deal.

Last night the kid returned. Glad to see he's going to give it a go.

There was one other thing about last night... a Sydney based singer. Val mentioned it was a female. No problem there. It might make us behave a bit more civilised. So, there we were last night, we got comfortable in our rehearsal room and started to just have a impromptu jam when this crazy girl with big hair bursts into the room announcing herself and asking where Val is.

I stopped her midway through her outburst. Pointing at her, saying "Get lost!!!! I know you!!!! What the hell are you going here?"

I had not seen this woman for about 4 to 5 years. I use to work with her when I was employed in IT. The craziness was overwhelming.

To top things off, I was checking out my Facebook account the other day and one of my friends on Facebook had her as a friend, and her face was on my page telling me she could be my friend. Funny part was, I clicked on the link and asked for her authorisation to be a friend.

Two days later, she's responded to a random advert we posted looking for a female singer and is standing right in front of me. I sense a big catch up happening soon.

We didn't get to hear too much of her last night, because she was still getting her head around the songs. But I have heard her perform before mainly as a singer/actor on stage in theatre productions. This is her main thing and responding to the advert we had online was something she decided to do purely for a change out of her normal cliché roles in theatre.

I was pleased to hear that because what we perform is different and challenging.

Last night turned out to be quite surreal. My bubble burst when I got home and my wife foiled my enthusiasm by saying "whoppedie doo" Not in those exact words, but to something of that extent.