I have to entertain the children

This is a quote from a mother about her own children; I have to entertain the children. It made me reflect on my parents and the idea that they had to entertain me was ridiculous, they expected me to entertain myself which I did and that became a lifelong skill and I can honestly say that I have never had a day in my life where I was bored. A skill was imparted by my parents by them not doing any entertaining!

The laid back Taoists of ancient China had a philosophy of letting the world turn and then all one does is ride the wave, if you need to, and if you don’t need to you just watch the wave!

I have made a career out of the opening quote and for that I am grateful but I believe it reflects a strange aspect in society that we have to be doing something and it is going to get a lot worse because the next generation of children will be parented by the children who need entertaining, where the hell are we going? What about people learning to be their own bosses following their own intuition?

Society has made everyone believe that they know nothing; a mass of people who need guidance. We are in a very strange place and that will develop very clearly that we are becoming mindless sheep. Maybe a glimmer of hope is that people are getting more connected and therefore there is a rise of a counterculture that might present an answer.

With music we have the chance to make something happen like in the days of Punk or the days of Skiffle where you did it for yourself there were no experts you just made it up as you went along rather like improvising. The test for improvising is simple, does it sound good?

So entertain yourself and listen to yourself and ask does it sound good and do I feel good? Oh and let the children play...

Vic



.www.bluescampuk.co.uk

 

The point about life is about living not working; we did not have children to make money for the ruling classes.

The reality is that many of us do have children for the above reason, ok not intentionally but if we consider the check list mentality that goes on in our culture where the young are literally going through their version of the bucket-list of life. The car, the house, the children, the holidays, the pets, the new job, we are doing this because it is the checklist given to us by the media passed through what our friends are doing; the living in London, the moving out of London etc.
As I get older the only thing that becomes clear to me is I realise how much I really do not know. When I was younger I knew it all and as each year went by the less I knew until now I am completely stupid BUT I have also in that time have become to realise that no one else knows anything either and all the points put across are flawed including the advice given to us by the experts
I my life time butter has been bad and now it is good, margarine was good and now it is bad, wine was good, bad, good and now bad, tea and coffee likewise fluctuate. So with that experience I ask myself who is paying for the research and who is getting the money for our fears?
In the past music and health treatments were free and you could heal yourself by eating the herbs that were outside your door.  Now we are told this is rubbish and we are encouraged to take drugs that cost lots of money only to discover later that A, they do not work. B they are more dangerous to either us or the environment than the good they do or C they are making someone who happens to be part of the ruling elite either here or in Washington lots of money, or all three of the above.
I suggest that we do what the troubadours did in times past become the channels of information through our music and bring our music to the people in such a way that avoids the big companies, that establishes the small i.e. you and your friends, and all things that you do you do for yourself and those around you disregarding the tick box culture propagated by the media
Be true to yourself, you are your best judge.

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk

The Gospel according to Kellogg

The physical act of crunching cornflakes or other cereals is portrayed as working an amazing alchemy on slothful human beings; the incoherent, unshaven sluggard is magically transformed into a smart and jolly worker full of vigour and purpose by the positive power of cereal. Kellogg himself, tellingly, was a puritanical health nut who never had sex (he preferred enemas). Such are the architects of our daily life. – Tom Hodgkinson

 

When we look at how something is presented through the media it often takes years before you really see what is going on and then after that epiphany everything starts to look stupid.

The book written by Tom Hodgkinson that this quote is taken from, How To Be Idle, is a great read with some lovely insights like this about the madness of the modern world and its fixation on cereals and health when the evidence is to the contrary. Yet as people are making lots of money from a product that has more nutrition in the cardboard packaging than its contents we are entranced into this spell that we should be happy and healthy like the actors in the advert.

Another point raised in this book is of days lost to business because of illness; his point is what happened to people being able to recover without popping a pill? Of course someone is making money out of you. What about life being lost to days of business?

Now we are seeing this with the schools and education. The idea that children cannot have a few days off without the law being broken is ridiculous because we you see what goes on in a school such as when there is a cover teacher taking a class then the pupils would be better to have done work on their own at home BUT we are led to believe that any moment lost at school is a disaster as if every moment of every day is of dire importance; this is rubbish.

Many of the things being taught at school is more about teaching people to conform than to think. A point raised by Matthew Parris in the BBC Radio 4 programme Great Lives is that it seems that a standard education is an impediment for a ‘great life’ as most of the nominated lives on the programme were either self-educated, late educated or unconventionally educated. May be the very fact that their education is different makes them stand out from the crowd.

I am suggesting that as a great musician and artist you MUST think for yourself and be different because you will not become successful if you believe the way to make it is being on The Voice or X Factor, think about it Adele, Amy Winehouse or Ed Sheeran made it without the talent show circus.

So think for yourself, don’t take what the media gives you and ask yourself why the education system is built the way it is and if you are like most artistic people you will feel uncomfortable with the system, simply because it was not built for people to become musicians it was to make you someone more pliable.

 

Vic

 

 

 

 

 

 

How Much Time?

How much time do you need to spend on artwork before it is finished? When have you not done enough?
For someone like Picasso who could paint a bird on glass in a few minutes or Billy Childish who says that if a piece of work takes more than twenty minutes it really isn’t happening, the idea of spending ‘enough time’ on a piece of work is an interesting concept.
Maybe it all comes down to the vision of the artist that once it reaches that fulfilment it is done but that is a challenging problem for examination work at schools when you are dealing with children. I am just wondering if this is presented to pupils at all in their lessons. I know that it was not for me until I met one of the special teachers that you remember who do more than just teach you the subject they change you and the way that you think. My art teacher did this by asking me ‘why’. Just that simple question, not saying that I was right or wrong but he wanted me to know for myself why and the formulation of the answer made me think about why and what I was doing.
I suspect that for the pupils of art it says more about what the teacher needs to show and what boxes they need to tick than what it says about the pupil. When someone tells you that even though they have spent hours on their work it still ‘is not enough’ you need have the vision of what is required, then do it and it IS finished.

Vic

 www.bluescampuk.co.uk

You already know

There is a charming tale of Chekov’s about a man who tried to teach a kitten to catch mice. When it wouldn’t run after them, he beat it, with the result that even as an adult cat, it cowered with terror in the presence of a mouse. ‘This is the man’ Chekov adds, ‘who taught me Latin.’ - Bertrand Russell ’Freedom versus Authority in Education’ 1928

 Nothing new here but have we the bravery to see through what seems the ‘right way’ at the moment; the thing of fashion that we will look back at and think, not only did not work but it was also wrong.

Beating the information into children was the way to teach from ancient Rome to recent times this was thought to be ok and some people would like to see that again. My concern is that authoritarian ways of teaching has now become deeply psychological and very difficult to spot if you are not aware of what is being done. I am sure however that people will look back and count some of today’s strategies as wrong. I would count among these the belief that people are stupid and that someone holds the answers; often the discovering of something happens inside you not from outside and this is so true with music that most of the information is already in there you just need to put a label on it.  

I frequently go on about Mr Gove and Mr Wilshaw but they perpetrate this kind of thinking and all they are doing is breaking the school system because there will be so few teachers left the system will have to change. What we are seeing is the killing of the goose that lays the golden eggs; there will be a very short term increase in eggs and then they will stop.

The way to teach is to find what excites the mind and then start from there, much of the learning will happen from the pupil themselves as they uncover what they already ‘know’ and their interest will make them learn more. 

Vic

 

 

 

Won't get fooled again.

Fear is actually convenient to the smooth functioning of an orderly society. A docile population which is terrified of the authorities in their various forms will more likely depend on objects and institutions to give them guidance, solidity, security and a sense of meaning. If you are fearful, then you are unlikely to riot and very likely to work hard and spend hard. – Tom Hodgkinson

 

Ok this may be a view of someone who is an anarchist but there are some very interesting points here and something that has been acted upon by societies throughout the ages and throughout the world.

When there was a problem in China they have always thrown the poets in jail first as they were the ones that spread dissent, now it is the bloggers. The easiest way of dealing with dissent is to find something or someone to fear who can become the ‘enemy outside’ or as the South Africans say the leopard outside.

The problem here is that without the voices of dissent nothing will change, or should I say nothing will change in a progressive way and the history of grand societies and cultures is they collapse from the inside.

Now the question to ask is ‘does the guitar still hold it rebellious streak?’ Now if the answer to that is yes then maybe this is something that we should look at in our playing and our teaching as this may something for our times like it did in the sixties.

So pick up your guitar and play, just like yesterday and get down on your knees and pray that we won’t get fooled again.

 

Vic

 

 

Revenge is a dish best served cold

My first piano teacher told my parents I was "not teachable because I would only learn by ear/by listening." Today I received a call at school from this unnamed individual (unaware who I was) where we were offered a piano master class but only if they were grade three and above.  It seems that after nearly 15 years this teacher is completely unable to adapt their teaching style to suit students who learn in other ways. The fundamental issue I have with this is that actually a good teacher can teach ANYBODY and can harness their skills.  It felt good telling them that on the telephone.  It felt better telling them that I was the Head of Music at the school and they had told me that some years ago.  "Revenge is a dish best served cold." Tom Knight
 
Tom is a good friend of mine and I was lucky enough to teach him a number of years back. Over the years I watched his development as a singer, guitarist, keyboard player, drummer and bass player and probably a few other instruments as well, but for me this little story tells a deeper message about the Old School of thinking about music and many other things that have written off much of the talent that was inherent in children by people that quite frankly might be good players but are shit teachers and there are still many of these about but fortunately they are not as mainstream as they were.
There is an extraordinary arrogance and ignorance in the belief that skills like music and art come from an intellectual elite so for those who in the past were from a lower class and therefore did not have the breeding to play music, or did not have any formal training because they were unable to afford lessons you were disregarded. This may seem an extreme statement but I can remember a time when the guitar was not considered a ‘serious’ instrument and I had this said to me a few times; my revenge was sweet as I gradually stole pupils from them as they migrated to the guitar.
It has been shown here that the classical pianist who contacted Tom was so totally wrong in his estimation of the young Thomas not only is he now the head of music at a school but because he is such an awesome musician and this was due to his commitment and belief in himself and not due to the pretentions of someone else.
Vic
 


Work with Tom at www.bluescampuk.co.uk
 

Do Not Think Listen.

Several years ago I was lucky to visit Ecuador and on arriving in Quito we visited the old quarter of the city. 
In a little street there was an old man elegantly turned out in a suit and wearing a Panama hat sitting playing a guitar. It was obvious that he was self-taught and was using the open strings and simple melodies on the top two strings of the instrument, very simple but very beautiful.
It was for me a profound moment where I really was touched by this man and his playing which seemed so genuine and heartfelt and it brought me back to what is was to be a musician.
For all of my knowledge of the instrument sometimes that magic does elude me and just experiencing someone playing from a real love of the guitar can take you back to what it was that hooked you in the first place.
Maybe we just need to not think for a while and listen with no judgement and by turning off the part of the brain that wants to analyse we can learn something new.
Vic


www.bluescampuk.co.uk three days in a rock band...

We have to say goodbye to Monsieur Descartes

We have to say goodbye to Monsieur Descartes and see the world as an interdependent whole. We have to go beyond the idea of self-interest embrace the idea of mutual interest, reciprocity and interdependence.

Satish Kumar

 

Music whether in performance or teaching needs other people, we may spend many hours honing our skills on our own but it needs others for it to happen. Music needs an audience and it needs surroundings; it is about context and it is about transmitting to others creating oneness with all things within earshot.

As Satish puts it, the whole of western thinking for the last three hundred years have been tainted by the Frenchmen’s ideas. Science rests on this idea of separateness, look at how medicine isolates the problem and does not look at the holistic questions. Also the concept of the dominance of humans on the planet is leading us to a very dark place whose true identity will not be revealed until it is too late.

Whether it is playing to others, teaching people to play or creating music for others to play it is a form of society and group bonding that happens with music. Sometimes it takes a while for young musicians to come to this realisation that the music they create is for others but when they do that is when they truly become musicians.

Music and Art reflects exactly what we need in the rest of our lives in that we are in the same boat as one another and the same boat as the rest of nature, and if we do not realise this it is not just about the extinction of the Rhino and the Elephant it will be us. So maybe it is for the musician and artist to create something human and global maybe for people to link together to create music on the net with no composer just a collective.

Your turn………

 

Vic

 

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Learn to bake.

‘Learn to bake bread; you cannot provide good education on a bad diet. Head, heart and hands is what education should be not the three R's. Transformation happens through the hands so every school should have a permaculture garden. Have dignity for the ones that are working with their hands they are really creating something. Start your own job; ask ‘where is your education vocation?’ Money should be the slave, you should be master.’ Satish Kumar.



Paul McKenna remarked a few years ago that school was not about education it was about conformity and I at the time agreed with this; over the years it has just become a lot worse.

The problem is the balance between learning new things but not losing sight that learning is really about opening the mind and this often requires us to think radically about what we take as a given.

Experts are not fonts of wisdom; they are only resources of knowledge, which is different. Knowledge has the problem of application and also runs the risk of being out of date. It is one thing to have the knowledge that a tomato is a fruit but having the wisdom not to put it in a fruit salad. Wisdom is the realm of the unconscious and therefore lies outside of the realm of measuring and controlling, it is by nature ethereal and formless however it often manifests itself through creating and that creating will need knowledge but the conclusion of the creating is wisdom of how, what, why and where.

By equipping people to create and use their abilities to then sell and build businesses we will give the public a way of developing themselves, building self-esteem which is something the education system often ruins for many. Self-belief is a very important tool for mental wellbeing and health in society something that is not being properly addressed.

What a great way for children to learn about themselves and the world and be able to go out and make something happen that is truly beneficial for society.

Vic

 
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Great mystics and sages.

“We have drunk Soma and become immortal; we have attained the light, the Gods discovered.

Now what may foeman’s malice do to harm us? What, O Immortal, mortal man’s deception? (Rig-Veda (8.48.3))”

Soma is important because it is a crucial source of inspiration for the people who wrote the Vedas, ancient texts that originated in India, making up the oldest scriptures of Hinduism (around 1st century B.C).

Is it that the great seers, mystics, poets and sages of the past transcended the ordinary conscious of the human mind by taking drugs, starving themselves or dancing into a cosmic rapport with great ideas beyond the thoughts of the time? We know that the great names of Greek philosophy  attended the Eleusinian mysteries which included a drink that we would now view as psychoactive.

Are we missing something here in that these are banned by the governments around the world and in the past the taking of these things were classed as witchcraft? Maybe the idea of taking plants, dancing or starving oneself would change one’s mind so much that you break the normal indoctrination that has been foisted on you by society was always a step too far for society that wanted to control thought?

The problem is that we do not think from the mind-set of the people who did these things, it was not a ‘bit of fun’ in fact it is far from a bit of fun, it is the saga and quest that was alluded to in the stories of the ancients, it is the recurring theme of the facing of the death of the ego the facing of your fears in an initiation. Such events as these were fraught with danger and not for the light hearted.

The extreme searching conducted by these people were undertaken by societies that faced danger in ways that we do not in today’s society but as soon as something happens to us we have no resources to deal with them. Ok allow me to simplify a little on these things but I do believe that our mind-set creates the landscape for all decisions that we make and living in a ‘Nanny State’ does not allow us to face up to the fact that life is not fair, just listen to the way that people want to blame everyone else but not take responsibility for themselves.

There is much evidence for these extreme states of mind contributing to spiritual and the origins of religious thought of all of the major religions with the use of starvation and extreme stress. Visionary episodes caused by contaminated food and the consumption of liquids including those of VERY strong beers such as heather beer that was known to have psychedelic fungus on the plant referred to as fogg and a theory that the ‘wine’ that the early Christians drank was mimosa which was used as a dye for fabrics in the middle east, and it is known that it was used by mystics both Islamic and Christian giving rise as it were to the stories of ‘flying carpets’ and maybe Soma was such a drink. If one looks at this early Christian and Muslim art it is incredibly visionary and although different from the Hindu art is also 'otherworldly'.

I will look at how music can create 'higher' states in the future but just open your mind to the possibility that some of the great developments in society, art and thought may have come from activities that are illegal, why is that?.  

Vic

 

OCD. Is it the Golden Goose?

I was talking to some artist friends of mine and I found it interesting that they all said they had OCD. Their attention to detail was very acute and it became obvious that their ‘condition’ was part of their skill. ‘Obsession is an important part of what makes me artistic,’ was one comment that was made in fact ‘I cannot see how you could produce work without it’, they went on to say.
Maybe the labelling of this condition as an illness maybe shooting the goose that lays the golden egg in that we may be losing the artists in our midst by trying to help those with states of mind that ‘normal’ people term as an impediment.
In the distant past the differences were often embraced as a gift but there is a theory that these differences were subject to a form of religious racism. In the west these Christian ‘values’ have been incorporated into our thinking including the idea that the experts have the answers and the public need to be saved. The experts have swapped their church robes for white coats but I would caution that the things that look right today may not be right in the future as our descendants look back to us. Ask yourself how confident the people in the past were with the teachings of the Church? Were they convinced they were right? They had God on their side; of course they believed they were right. Now we are confident, we are right and we have our god, science on our side.
The one thing that seems so evident is that science never seems to spot the unexpected consequence, the black swan, and how can it? However it can look sceptically at its actions and maybe see that often they are taking us down roads of no return.
How much longer will it be that anything that deviates from the norm will be considered something to be changed, this was tried in the most draconian terms with homosexuality but something like thinking differently is much harder to defend against because in many cases it can be a problem if the world is wired up differently to your world, that does not necessarily mean it is wrong, just different, and to be a great artist you need  to be different.
Vic
  


www.bluescampuk.co.uk we need keyboard players for bluescamp this year!
 
 

Brainwashing warning from Aldous Huxley

‘There will be in the next generation or so a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude and producing dictatorship without tears so to speak. Producing a kind of painless concentration camp for the entire society so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but rather will enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda, or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods, and this seems to be the final revolution.’-  Aldous Huxley
 
Interesting thoughts of Aldous Huxley and he may be correct in many ways; the trouble is if he is correct we will not know! When you watch programmes like The Voice and X Factor you are being swept into someone’s idea of how fame is created which for most musicians seems a total sham but for the general population and particularly children that is how it works.
The strength of brainwashing is that it is easy to rebut criticism by saying it is a conspiracy theory or it is subversive thinking but if you look back in history that was the defence of many governments which in hindsight we can see but civil populations at the time did not, mostly because they trusted their leaders.
I am not attempting to change the political system but I would say that this sort of thing is a mind-set and mind-sets do not restrict themselves to one place they become the zeitgeist for the time. Here is an example of this during the time of mass production lines. This idea of production lines was adopted by Stax Records and Studio One who had a resident band and the singers would come in and work on a song then leave in time for another to come in and so on, like a revolving door. It produced great records of course but it meant that the artists were working with the musicians set by the studio.
Look at the ideas that coming out from the government; low crime figures, better economic growth, Olympic Games, etc.  It is the selection of these ideas that Huxley would have found troubling, the fact that few people are killed by terrorists and many are killed directly by the car and indirectly by the pollution caused by the car; however the government uses terrorism as the tool for anything from immigration to putting CCTV cameras on every corner. I am personally more afraid of the driving by the middle classes in Sussex than by a man with a beard from Birmingham.
The pharmacology aspect is interesting to me, that drugs taken in order to keep you from being ill is the best business model of anything I have ever seen. If only we as teachers and musicians could keep being paid on a regularly basis just in case their ‘patient’  were required to play in the future we would all be minted.
Use music as a way of allowing you to think creatively, open your mind and be different from what is set out for you by society because you are greater than society says that you are.
 
Vic
Check out www.bluescampuk.co.uk
 
 

We are much greater than we think that we are. Consciousness sees. Nicholas Mann

Let me ponder this week on the above phrase and play a little with it. Have you noticed that great artists, musicians and inventers often do their best work when they are young? This seems rather odd as we could all look at the development through experience would mean that our best work would happen AS WE GOT OLDER.

I have watched young children learning the guitar and noticed that when they are younger they will take on pieces that are too complicated for them but because that like them and they want to play the piece they can achieve amazing things. I think it is because they can fantasise themselves playing the music and this works on the deeper structure of the above quote.

We are limited by what we believe whatever that belief is so when you are young you have very little beliefs about yourself and therefore are not restricted but what you KNOW.

What we believe is very important because we limit ourselves to that, so if you believe that you are the best blues guitarist ever you will never be good at playing jazz and if you are the best Jazz guitarist ever you will never make any money as a rock musician and let’s face it you may not make any money as a jazz guitarist either, sorry it is an old joke.

My take on this is that we can make our own world by what we believe because believing creates the template for the mind and it will see what it believes. Therefore if you ARE a great musician great things will occur to you because they will not be screen out by the unconscious as being incompatible to you. Also if you believe that all things pass through you as if you are a conduit (which is a common theme with great artists) then you will open your mind to new things that seem not to come from you. I have seen this happen under hypnosis and it is quite something.

There was a story that I have quoted before about someone asking Richard Branson for a business idea to which Branson looked around and said ‘look at that outside heater. Find out who is making them and start selling them yourself’. This was a couple of years before the boom in patio heaters that swept the country; it wasn’t because they were not there it was only him who saw it and not the journalist.

 Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk

 

RGT Electric Guitar Exams - Grade 3, Grade 4 & Grade 5

“There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.” - Leonard Cohen

I was listening to Van Morrison’s Brown Eyed Girl and someone pointed out to me that the bass player’s E string was out of tune, I had not noticed this before and I then thought of the squeaking bass drum pedal on John Bonham’s kit which you can clearly hear on Since I’ve Been Loving You. I could add the out of tune guitar of Ike Turner at the beginning of Chain of Fools by Aretha Franklin and many more and what that seems to say to me is that these imperfections do not impair the greatness of the music if anything they add to it, like some form of magic dust or charisma to the sound that makes it real unlike the highly polished computer processed recordings that we have today.

Billy Childish commented that primitiveness is important in art and that technique can get in the way of the work and I believe that this can most definitely be an important aspect to our playing and teaching for people to connect to the real emotion of music. Maybe there is too much emphasis on the perfection of the playing and not the emotional performance in exams. If this were not the case in music generally that emotion was the real power of music the old blues players, punk and grunge musicians would not have sold any records in the past and the listening public would have all been listening to the beautiful technical classical recordings.

So just like the broken Japanese pottery that is put back together with gold in the cracks to show that a broken bowl is more valuable than one that has no experience of being broken maybe we should look for the cracks and breaks in our own playing because that is where you are.

Vic

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Pantheon of music and icons.

The inner sky of the mind fills with images, ideas and concepts on a continuous basis. Some of these ideas seem so real and so powerful they become apparently autonomous.

Yet the Gods and Goddesses are creations of our own minds. They stud the starry universe that wheels within and only within our eyes. They provide a way for consciousness to think about the whole with all its ambivalent and changing parts. They provide a functional cosmology based upon real observable polarity of male and female, which tells the whole story of creation. Consciousness flourishes in the mythic cycle that includes every aspect and symbol of the divine. - Nicholas Mann

The rich and open canvas of the mind is the powerhouse of our consciousness it is our best ally and also our greatest enemy and to understand it is to be able to use that tool that is also fundamental to what makes us who we are.

I have always been interested in meeting new people, especially creative people; I am very interested to learn from them. Often these people become friends and one such person was Stuart Wilde.

Stuart was an incredible writer and thinker; he was a writer for music projects such as ‘Heartland’ and ‘Greenwood’ and his own metaphysical books and recordings. He was a lecturer on the occult and mystical and he was a natural comedian and bon viveur.

Some of Stuart’s ideas were so left field, but as you got to know him you could really grasp what he was getting and he had an amazing line of prediction which included the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004, the World Financial Crash (which no one else seemed to see coming) and the child abuse scandal involving the Catholic Church.

But what I liked about him was his generous spirit and how he wore his heart on his sleeve and his ability to move his mind into areas like music that even in his own opinion had no obvious skill. We did a recording a few years back and when I said he should sing on it he said he had a voice like ‘a frog in a bag’, I thought he could do a Lee Marvin but I could not sway him on this.

For people like Stuart opening the mind and ‘seeing’ the inner world and then creating from it was the magic that we as artists need to engage with. Too much of musical teaching is wrapped up in the theory and not in the expansiveness of the unconscious and we can benefit greatly from the pantheon of mind’s symbology and iconography so imagine what you want and start to manifest it through your work.

Vic

 www.bluescampuk.co.uk

 

 

 

‘Life is about the journey not the destination.’ Diana Dyad

We spend most of our lives doing instead of being, we are constantly striving for a goal and doing what we think we need to reach the target and in that process we forget the steps that we are taking, where we are and when we take those steps. What is under our feet? What landscape is there? It is the journey we need to savour.

In music it is the spaces between the notes that contain the music not the notes themselves and not the attainment of the last bar. I have realised this in the act of practising the guitar over the years, that if we spend all of our time practicing scales do we want our music to sound like a bunch of scales or do we want it to sound like we are saying something of ourselves through the notes? If we are more attentive on the process the journey of the learning we will be more aware of the ideas that we are programming into our fingers.

To have a successful journey we need a destination like doing an examination for the guitar we need the exam date, we need to turn up and participate but the true benefit is in the preparation for the examination not the exam itself.

For those of you who regularly read these ramblings you will know that I believe that music is a reflection of life and we can learn much about life through music and as with any truth it works the other way as well so we can learn much about music through the lessons of life. This is why musicians become better as they get older not because of technique but because of experience. Hence the reason that I write about these things under the heading of making money from music is because the deeper you are playing and teaching the more it resonates with the people who come in contact with you.

So feel the steps that you take and be aware of every note that you play through your body and remember to delay the ending of your journey. You have much to give and much to receive before you play your last note.

Vic

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“If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.” Lao Tzu

What a good time to review where you are going and reflect. Tacking upwind to deal with the changing the weather patterns to get to your destination. Question is, have you a destination or are you just being blown about by the winds of other people’s thoughts?

So how do we make the changes? Well first of all where are you heading? Let us say that we need to increase business, get more people in; how many and from where?

Once you know how many and who they are, can you see them in your head? This all helps to alert the unconscious to look and see the opportunity that you would have previously missed.  I use this system for teaching music as it connects with the unconscious and bypasses the intellect. The imagination helps to process large amounts of information and for the creative process it helps to mitigate the negative effects of the conscious mind. When we hear the music in our head it will come out of your fingers; see the musicians playing in your head and you can alter the dynamics of the parts that you are playing.

Imagination helps us to find a new direction, once we have the outcome in our minds the unconscious will flag up the opportunities. Ok you have to trust this process it is a bit like learning the guitar, if you keep telling yourself you cannot do this and you are not good enough, talented enough or just that it does not work for you, you will fail. So make a plan, work back from the picture and see what happened before and then before that till you reach what you have to do today; then do it.

So instead of looking back we should look forward and set a challenge for the New Year. May I wish you all the very best for your plans.

 

Vic

 

www.bluescampuk.co.uk  Play in a rock band for three days

 

Let us look at the clever indoctrination in history and think again.

I learnt that Nelson won the battle of Trafalgar; the Duke of Wellington beat Napoleon at Waterloo; the Duke of Marlborough won the battle of Blenheim and so on. History is littered with great men (mostly) doing great things. The great men of history were aristocrats, interesting! The truth is they would not have got very far without an army or navy manned by the VERY special ingredient, ORDINARY people.
Ordinary people have been written out of history just in the same way they are being written out of the education plans. Ordinary people have an extraordinary ability overlooked by history and the current education system, they can learn incredible skills WHEN they are motivated and that is my point, where is the motivation in being told consistently that you are not good enough?
We have an education system being pissed around with by a dick from a public school with someone in charge of Ofsted who appears either to have OCD or is a sociopath and everyone has to do what he says. ‘We should be more like the Chinese, Japanese and Indonesians’; apparently they are better than us. I am interested in the deeper meaning of this, of the masses working so hard that many young people in places like Japan under the pressures of expectation commit suicide.
In my opinion we should be like ourselves and to point out how brilliant our ordinary people can be read the Putney debates from the 17^th century when the foot soldiers of the New Model Army discussed how the political system could work. Remember these people were left out of history overshadowed by Oliver Cromwell and King Charles! You realise that these simple people were brilliant thinkers, as are we today. 
The idea that we should be more like the Chinese might be a good idea in some ways however because they rose up and disposed of their leaders, so Mr Gove and Mr Wilshaw beware of what you wish for.
 
Vic
 
Three days of music www.bluescampuk.co.uk for details