So What?

Puppets and Projections

I thought I'd have another go at saying what I was trying to say last night.  When we see a puppet show we suspend our belief that the puppets are simulacre.  We can see they are puppets and yet we are disposed to see them as somehow real.  It is interesting to consider the conditions under which we are willing to do this.

So, I think with today's Dr Who we would be less tolerant of a visible puppet than we were with the classical series.  Even the famous Myrka "pantomime horse" in Warriors from the Deep (below) was somehow tolerable in a way even a subtle lapse would not be today.

Yesterday, I compared our relationship with puppets with the quantum mechanics idea of super-position.  Here something can be both a particle and a wave at the same time, for example.  We project onto the puppet our imaginary rendtition of the thing it represents and so see the (real) puppet and the (pretend) creature at the same time.

But of course, puppets are simply one clear example of what is a much more common experience.  Indeed we project our interpretations all the time.  The goal of any spiritual discipline is to see through our projections to the reality beneath.  How do we know we're seeing the reality beneath?  Well, that is of course what we have to learn. 

This is where the atheists get it wrong of course.  The goal of good religion is to see clearly.  It is not about believing loads of things that are self-evidently not true but seeing the truth behind what is delusional but appears true.

   

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• Quantum Puppetry (chrississons.typepad.co.uk)

Working with Your Hands

Image via Wikipedia

I am reading The case for working with your hands: or why office work is bad for us and fixing things feels good by Matthew Crawford.  I'll possibly review it later but here's a passage, from page 91:

Countless times since that day, a more experienced mechanic has pointed out to me something that was right in front of my face, but which I lacked the knowledge to see.  It is an uncanny experience; the raw sensual data reaching my eye before and after are the same, but without the pertinent framework of meaning, the features in question are invisible.  Once they have been pointed out, it seems impossible that I should not have seen them before.

This is a common observation and many people will recognise it.  But it is also something we don't necessarily acknowledge as a matter of course. 

To put it negatively we often fail to pay attention and it is being attentive that is at the core not only of working with our hands but also of spirituality.  Indeed, spirituality is essentially paying attention.  You can have something pointed out to you but someone must have paid attention at some point in order to be able to point it out.  Paying attention is hard work, often the experience of being stuck leads to someone paying attention to some detail after hours of frustration.

Paying attention is at the core of prayer.  When we pray, it is not God who is revealed to us but reality through God.  I think it was Anthony de Mello who said something like, asking God to reveal himself is like asking a knife to cut itself.

Prayer is about encountering reality, as it is, independent of our plans and strategies.  It is not hectoring God about what we need in order to do our thing, but simply being aware of what is there and needing our attention.  Indeed the god who needs to be hectored is no god, just a fantasy.  God is never revealed but always reveals.

In my other blog, Exploring Ecumenism, I have frequently visited the idea of conversation and its power to transform.  The mistake we make in too many religious debates, is to expect the world to be final and perfect.  What we find is a world not of unchanging perfect entities but of many things in relationships, in conversation, imperfect, sometimes free, sometimes imprisoned, extremely complex and always stumbling across new things.  This is what makes the universe the place where we encounter life, because all is in relationship with God.

We are conscious beings and it is through prayer our consciousness becomes disciplined enough to apprehend the genuinely new amongst the pointless frustrations of our fantasies.

Flash Mob - Hallelujah Chorus

My colleague Anna Drew has posted this video on her blog World Inside my Head.  I've reproduced it here because her blog slices it in half!  After my post on Monday, about Sheffield's premature Christmas celebrations, perhaps this is the way we should celebrate Christmas ...

This took place in 13 November this year and at the time of posting has had more than 1.3 million hits.

 

Related articles

• An Impromptu "Hallelujah Chorus" (thefrisky.com)
• Why Christmas is early this year (chrississons.typepad.co.uk)

God's Passion for Beetles

Last week I attended our circuit local preachers' refresher course.  We have these once a year and we are expected to attend as one of our commitments as preachers.  This year I organised it.  Last summer, I met a new District Chaplain for the Arts, who is now the District Venture FX Pioneer Minister.  Also I asked our circuit Mission Enabler to help lead the day, about creativity in worship.

This is my contribution of a piece of writing for use in worship.  It is pretty much as I delivered it on the day - it would benefit from some polishing and if I get around to a second version I shall share it here.  It is based on the opening verses of John's Gospel and I have written about them before  (exactly 18 months ago!).  It is also based upon the story that when the biologist J B S Haldane was asked about creation, he replied God must love beetles!

It all started down the pub.  Look at this, said God, taking a gulp of Crudgingtons 6X.  He produced his prototype - I call it an atom - I've ideas for loads of different models and I'm going into mass production soon.

And I, said the other, am going to keep an eye on things, give them a nudge now and again.  It'll be brilliant what these atoms can do.  What about you?

Me?  I'll dance - through time and space - and watch and listen, inspire and create.

The next time they met, she said - the things I've seen!  You must love beetles and stars and grains of sand; parasitic wasps and neon lighted jellyfish in the ocean's darkest depths.  I've watched planets form, fish crawl from the seas, dinosaurs live and die - but not lose hope, they turned into birds!

You ain't seen nothing yet, said God, ordering another round.

Soon, she saw others who saw things as she did, who also watched and listened and danced and created; who set things in order and analysed and invented.  They were brilliant in their own way - brilliant and sad, wise and dangerous, comic and tragic.

Don't you think they need help, she asked?  I'm onto it, said the other, with some trepidation.

Lent 23: George Lovell

But the time and energy to think is strictly limited!  It simply is not possible to think in a thorough-going way about everything all the time.  Doing so would paralyse us.  This does not mean, as some infer, that there is little point in trying to think about anything in depth.  On the contrary, it points us to the vital importance of selecting carefully just what we should be thinking about at any particular time.  Of itself that requires thought.  Life is, in fact, sustained by an ever changing pattern of doing things without thinking, doing and thinking at the same time, and thinking before doing.  Human and spiritual development occurs when the combination of thought and action is creatively integrated.  (From: Analysis and Design , page 16)

I think I first encountered George Lovell in the early 1990s, when he was involved with Avec, at Chelsea Methodist Church.  At that time, I took one of the Avec courses.  (Avec is the French for with.)  Over ten years later, I took part in his post-graduate diploma, Consultancy, Mission and Ministry, which drew on his long experience of non-directive practice for church and community workers.  If Britain has a home grown equivalent to Citizens' Organising in the States, it was Avec and more recently the CMM course, which continues despite George Lovell's retirement.  It is a pity his work is not better known but then non-directive working has never been particularly valued in the UK.

The creative integration of thought and action is sometimes called Praxis.  I believe all the great movements of Christian inspired change have achieved, at least for a period, integration of thought and action.  Sometimes we call it integrity.  This is a theme we should reflect upon, particularly if we value the transformation of human societies.

Improvisation and Spirituality 6: Cameron Carpenter

This video features some splendid improvisations as well as Cameron's reflections on improvisation.  It is worth exploring the TED website for a wealth of challenging and thoughtful presentations.

 

 

Improvisation and Spirituality 5: Viola Spolin

Many years ago, before I went to university in 1972, I read a book about improvisation by Viola Spolin .  One particular idea has stayed with me down the years.  I lost track of the book but I have used her idea of 'point of concentration' many times.

In improvised theatre the point of concentration is something the actors focus upon, to create a particular effect for the audience.  I think Spolin used the first act of Tchaikovsky's opera The Queen of Spades .  It is set in a park and the chorus plays people strolling around the park, including children playing, etc.  How do you get it to look as if the people in the park are milling around at random?  It could so easily look staged.

Spolin's solution was to have the actors in the wings face each other across the stage.  They would play a game which involved on certain cues, crossing the stage in character.  These crossings looked far more natural than any prearranged signals might.  The game is the point of concentration.  The audience see people walking around a park, not the game.

As a community development worker I have found this an invaluable idea.  I ask myself what I need to focus upon to achieve my goals.  It is not always the direct path that leads to the goal.  Frequently short term problems obscure the long term focuses for local groups.  Rivalries, usually over resources, conceal the long term benefits of working together.  The point of concentration  should be the long term goals, as this will often enable competing groups to collaborate. 

Some readers might be asking, why didn't he google Viola Spolin?  To be honest I thought she would be a forgotten name.  Not a bit of it.   She is very well known in improvised theatre.  I think I've found the book I read  all those years ago.  Some revised edition changed the name from point of concentration to focus.  A shorter word and perhaps in some ways a better one, for development workers.

The blog is a good summary and emphasises the fun of game playing for the actors and audience.  I have found the use of games in training sessions very helpful.  For community and church organisations the opportunity to think with their bodies as well as their minds can release creativity. 

Our image of spirituality is perhaps the religious person sat in prayer.  Yet most traditions emphasise the importance of how you sit.  Spiritual exercises are often as much physical as they are mental.  Too often we are in danger of thinking spiritual means leaving the body behind.  Our bodies are in fact part of who we are and therefore of our spirituality.  When we intellectualise our conversations, we remove the playfulness.  The ability to play with ideas, is close to our ability to play games.

Improvisation and Spirituality 4: What is Improvisation?

I am not a musician.  Or any type of performing artist.  I write therefore from the perspective of someone who has listened to performing arts all my life. 

We live in a world of recorded performances.  How many times do we hear material that has been recorded directly from an improvised performance?  It is a difficult question to answer.  One way is to describe the sorts of things we might be hearing.  For musical performances, I suspect we hear the following:

1. Some performances are rehearsed performances of material that has been written down.  Most people would agree this is not improvised, even though the original composer might have improvised the music before she or he wrote it down.
2. Sometimes, there has been a long process of improvisation, particularly with groups of jazz players but the recorded result is something they can now reproduce note for note. 
3. A standard tune is improvised by a group of musicians according to strict rules, based upon some degree of rehearsal.
4. A group of people play together and record whatever comes out.

Clearly there is a range of possibilities between the attempt to reproduce written music and raw music generated on the hoof.  Sometimes it is difficult to tell where improvisation ends.  Go back to my post about Little Boots.  It is clear her finished version for her CD (the third I mention) is no longer improvised.  But how much work had already been done before the recording of the same tune in her bedroom (second version)?  It could be an early recording but just as easily produced after her album as promotional material.

Similarly, Diana Krall's version of Fly Me to the Moon  could be just as rehearsed as Nat Cole's.  My guess is not only most new music but also new interpretations of old music start with improvisation.  But at some stage a piece of music is recorded or ready for public performance and and the performance itself is not improvised.

Improvisation is the conversation the musician has with the composer, other musicians, their own instrument or even an orchestra in their imagination.  Sometimes it is necessary to play as previously arranged but always at some distance the good musician has improvised.

I have written elsewhere about the power of generative conversations  and that they do not have to be with people  to be conversations.  This is the fount of creativity, the discovery of new notes from old instruments, the wringing of new emotion from an old tune, the spontaneous emergence of a new tune from an old emotion.  To improvise is to be receptive.

Another way of looking at it is through complexity theory .  Complexity happens where chaos and order meet.  The movement from a new tune to an established, written melody and on again is a necessary dimension to creativity.  The exciting thing is we can pause anywhere and listen for something new.  Recorded music allows us to do this more than at any time in the past.

In this video Diana Krall speaks of her own creative processes.

Improvisation and Spirituality 3: Diana Krall

Nat King Cole inspired Diana Krall.  Her CD All For You is made up of covers of numbers by Nat Cole's trio, from his early days.  This is her version of Fly Me to the Moon, in the style of the early Nat Cole.  There is a link to the later Nat Cole version of this song, on the earlier post.

Diana Krall issued a number of CDs with her early Cole style trio.  In more recent years she too has moved on to more sophisticated orchestrations, including some that use strings!  Look of Love is an example of Krall's later style.  It is interesting how the two careers have mirrored each other in this respect.

Those who are wondering what this series of posts has to do with spirituality (or improvisation for that matter) do not have long to wait.  In the next post in this series I will reflect on what we mean when we say a piece of music has been improvised.

Improvisation and Spirituality 2: Nat King Cole

King was Nat Cole's nickname.  Lots of jazz men during the early decades had them and many seemed to be based upon European aristocracy.  Others included Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Earl Hines ...  You might think Nat Cole earned his name as arguably the world's most popular singer.  You would be wrong.  What is less well known is that Nat Cole was a jazz pianist (just like the other aristocrats I've named!)and some would argue that his greatest work was during his early life in a trio with double bass and guitar.

Unlike Little Bootswho moves backwards and forwards between informal and formal presentations of her music, Nat Cole showed a progression through his career.  Nat King Cole became famous later when he lost the trio and focused on singing.  He was immensely successful.

Many listeners to jazz view this progression with dismay.  A sure sign of loss of the jazz spirit is the introduction of strings!  Listen to Fly Me To the Moon to see what I mean.  This video includes the words, so you can sing along!  In my next post in this series, there will be another version of this song, by way of contrast.