Category: philosophy
Following on from yesterday’s post on searching for a lost voice, and still feeling a need for greater clarity in my thinking, I reached for a book from my bookshelf that always gives me sustenance and hope.
Wake Up And Live! by Dorothea Brande is a book first published in 1936 which I bought 35 years ago for 70p from the Staffs Book Shop in Lichfield (which is sadly no more).
It now seems to be out of print so ,while copies can still be found on the net, a new paperback edition can set you back $375.48 at Amazon.Com.
Thankfully, this being the sharing caring digital age, I’m not about to make a fortune selling my tatty volume on e-bay as anyone interested in reading it can do so for free by downloading a PDF copy that some kind soul has uploaded for mass consumption.
This individual has done a noble public service as this is a book that ,while a little dated , will probably never reach a sell by date since the sound advice contained in the pages is so down to earth and practical.
Unlike so many books in the field of self-help, it does not carry any hidden religious agenda – it doesn’t require the reader to have faith in a higher being; the only faith you need is a belief in yourself. View full article »
The disembodied mouth in Samuel Beckett's 'Not I' is a poignant image of isolation.
I am often sceptical of holistic remedies and new age thinking but Louise Hay’s ‘You Can Heal Your Life’ contains a lot of explanations and advice about feelings of dis-ease that more often than not accurate.
She identifies just two mental patterns that poison the body and lead to illness : fear and anger.
I currently have a sore throat and feel that I am on the point of losing my voice.
Louse Hay describes the throat as an “avenue of expression” and a “channel of creativity”.
As a consequence, she states that problems with this part of my body are due to: “the inability to speak up for one’s self. Swallowed anger. Stifled creativity. Refusal to change”.
This diagnosis strikes a chord with me and rings true.
In my family, I am currently feeling that my voice isn’t being heard and am finding it harder to communicate with my 16-year-old daughter who is experiencing a lot of growing pains and psychological challenges resulting from school, boyfriends and other peer pressure.
At work, I am in a situation where I am no longer sure of my role. I am finding it harder to motivate myself and to feel that my work is worthwhile.
In other general situations, when I am with Italians and try to express my opinions; I feel the burden of having to articulate complex ideas or emotions in my second language.
Many of these would be hard enough to say in my mother tongue and the linguistic filter leaves me feeling that I have barely scratched the surface about what it is I really want to say.
Louise L. Hay’s cure is to change my thought pattern and feel that it’s okay to make noise. She advises the following affirmations:
- I express myself freely and joyously.
- I speak up for myself with ease.
- I express my creativity.
- I am willing to change.
The voice of Henry Miller in the opening lines of his novel The Tropic of Cancer also come to mind as I contemplate these thoughts:
“To sing you must first open your mouth. You must have a pair of lungs and a little knowledge of music. It is not necessary to have an accordion or a guitar. The essential thing is to want to sing. This then is a song. I am singing”.
If this post makes you think you should be singing more too – click on ‘like’ button. It would help me feel less alone.
The following inspiring quote from the wonderfully named Larry Brilliant was shared with me by a Facebook friend and I thought it merited passing on via this Blog :
“Ordinary people do extraordinary things, and then we lionise them. We make heroes out of them. And that’s a problem, because it makes other ordinary people look at these heroes and think that they can’t achieve the same things. But that path is open to everybody. Anybody at any time…………It’s ordinary people who become the heroes.”
Original source from Fran Monks' How To Make A Difference blog.
In appropriately random fashion, yesterday at the Sala Borsa Library in Bologna, I came across a DVD I had never heard of it before entitled John Cage From Zero. It contains four films by Frank Scheffer and Andrew Culver.
The first is 19 Questions, “a chance determined interview” in which we are quickly made aware how important numbers, chance and time were to Cage. He allows a precise number of seconds to each topic , for example 42 seconds on chess, 24 seconds on death and 48 seconds on mathematics. Although it is billed as an interview, we see and hear only a relaxed Cage speaking directly to camera with a stop watch in his hand.
He would have failed miserably if he were a contestant on the BBC radio show Just A Minute as he hesitates a lot, deviates occasionally and sometimes repeats himself.
The pauses in particular are often prolonged – his 26 seconds on Postmodernism is as follows (the dots indicate the pauses): “Postmodernism obviously comes after modernism ………………………… I wonder what the difference is ……………… perhaps it has something to do with refection”
His three seconds on Zen Buddhism is just five words – “The structure of the mind”. View full article »
