I have been wanting to write about these topics since I started reading “Where the Heart Beats” by Kay Larson. WordPress indicates that this is 7,000 words and a 38-minute read (despite my aggressive editing when I initially saw it was a “40-minute” read). You can skip the several long articles I have included, of course. Enjoy, subscribe, share, comment..❤️
I had accumulated a pile of notes on paper and on my phone, but somehow never made the time to write. Then I saw this post online.
It was to promote September as Suicide Prevention Month. It gave me the little push to MAKE some time to sit and write. Today was the usual perfect September day in Buffalo (it is almost always sunny and in the 70s in September). I had a few FREE hours between exercising and going to a therapy appointment, and had to get a book on hold at the library, a book so old that it was not available for kindle or audiobook.
I searched on the hold shelves without luck. When I checked my phone, I saw that I had waited a few days too long and the book had been returned to the downtown library. I didn’t get upset because having to go to the library had given me the idea to sit outside and do some writing. There is a short nature trail behind the Amherst Senior Center (in the same complex as the police headquarters and the library). I took a relaxing stroll and then settled on a partially shaded bench to write for a few hours.
“Where the Heart Beats” was written in 2012, and I don’t recall when or how I first heard of it. I had, though, added it to my Libby (library app) hold list, and in July, it became available. In July, I started reading it on my Kindle in Lake Placid, NY, while volunteering for the Ironman Race. I needed some relaxation after a busy and challenging spring. The meme below perfectly reflects my difficult time in April and May.
I was so low at one point that I posted this depression meme on Instagram with the caption: The gray drizzle of horror. -William Styron (he wrote The Confessions of Nat Turner in 1967 and Sophie’s Choice in 1979).
I started taking photos of the Cage book from the very beginning.
While in Japan in March, I had started listening to a Zen podcast, but I stopped soon after returning home, as my life issues left me too exhausted to listen to such a demanding topic. But immediately upon starting “Where The Heart Beats”, I noticed all the “connections” to my interests, travels, and other books I had enjoyed.
In addition to Zen, his art was greatly influenced by Taoism, the I-Ching, and quantum physics.
At the end of this post is the full NY Times 2012 review of the book.
It took me until late August to finish the book (which is a long time for me, even for a 500-page book). As I read, I continually found connections to my life and interests, and took the time to explore the web for deeper insights into the history, artists, and philosophy discussed in the book.
While reading about John Cage’s experience of discovering and practicing Zen and Tao in the 1940s, I was also prompted to delve deeper into Zen myself through the podcast and books Cage had read.
When I looked for a podcast to listen to in Japan, this one had good reviews. A female Zen priest, she had done 300 podcasts since 2017. I listened to a random one in Japan, but then started at the beginning, where she explains the basics and history of Zen.
I listened to Alan Watts’ 1957 book (which I definitely read in high school or college) and am still reading Suzuki’s 1934 book (amazingly, the forward is by Carl Jung, who discusses how psychotherapy and Zen both allow people to delve into their egos).
Watts was a British “orientalist” who ended up in Berkeley, CA, and introduced the Beat Generation to Zen and non-dualism, and also later explored and promoted psychedelics.
D.T. Suzuki (1870-1966!) was a Japanese Zen master and translator who sought to introduce Western audiences to the teachings of Zen. John Cage read his books, attended his lectures at Columbia University, and later became friends with him.
https://www.asianstudies.org/publications/eaa/archives/d-t-suzuki-a-biographical-summary
I searched my i-Photo library for “John Cage” to find the book cover, but the search ALSO found these older photos (well, it is a “smart” phone).
This was a 2022 Laurie Anderson exhibit at the Hirshhorn Museum in D.C. I had taken the train down from Baltimore (I was there for a Johns Hopkins reunion), and it was so worth the time!
In medical school, I spent many nights listening to her with my friends.
I never got to see her live. I am not sure if she still performs? Well, of course, I can ask Google AI….
The retrospective of her life and art was fantastic.
John Cage organized the first instance of “performance art” or a “happening” while at a summer session for modern artists at Black Mountain College in 1952.
The Black Mountain College in North Carolina was the hot house for avant-garde and experimental work. Set up in the 1930s by John A Rice, it was a liberal arts college based on the progressive education principles of John Dewey and placed a high value on arts as an integral and indispensable part of the curriculum. During the thirties and forties, influential European artists and designers found a home there, fleeing Nazi persecution. Josef Albers was the first art teacher, bringing knowledge and principles from the Bauhaus.
Dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham and composer and musician John Cage were already working together when they first came to Black Mountain in 1948 and reconstructed Erik Satie’s The Ruse of the Medusa with collaborators including Buckminster Fuller, Elaine and Willem de Kooning. On their return in 1952 they worked with others including pianist David Tudor and artist Robert Rauschenberg. Together, though orchestrated by Cage, this group created what could be called the first ‘happening’, an untitled event (now sometimes known as Theatre Piece no.1) in the college dining hall. A number of performances took place within a choreographed time bracket, but without narrative or causal relation to each other. Though few were there in the audience, the ripples of the event played out through the following decades in avant-garde performance.
Merce Cunningham (he was a student of Martha Graham and in her troupe until he formed his own and became one of America’s great modern dancers and choreographers) was John Cage’s partner for many decades. They lived separately, though, until after Stonewall finally made it not criminally dangerous to be an openly gay artist.
Laurie Anderson was significantly influenced by Cage and had the opportunity to spend time with him in NYC at the end of his long life.
I am going to take a brief break from discussing John Cage and interconnectedness to move on to the topic of Disconnecting.
I have always been a news “junkie”. I have enjoyed reading, listening to, and watching the news since I was a kid. I enjoyed learning about world politics, economics, technology, and history. I used to spend hours a day listening to NPR while driving, running, or biking. During Trump’s first term, I stopped listening to NPR, as nearly every few stories were about his latest tweet, rant, corrupt grift, or “policy.” Since his second election, I have been more and more outraged, frustrated, anxious, and depressed by our nation’s collapsing democracy. I am, of course, not the only one suffering from this. I saved a few memes over the course of a few days of doomscrolling.
You get the point. Being a liberal, atheist, democratic socialist who has empathy for the poor, the non-white, immigrants, the disabled, LGBTQs, etc. I can doomscroll on Facebook and Instagram and read so many depressing articles in the NY Times, watch so much MSNBC and BBC that I become VERY frustrated and depressed.
I AM THERE! Especially since I have read every book and seen every film on that chart! How did they miss V FOR VENDETTA? THAT is what we need now—a real uprising.
About a month ago, my therapist suggested I occasionally take a break from the news, and having done so, I am definitely doing better mentally. So far, I have been trying to read the NY Times on Sundays and then avoid all news and social media for a few days each week. On days that I work, I allow myself to briefly read the news since I am less likely to doomscroll or get depressed while enjoying time with colleagues and caring for patients.
However, disconnecting several days a week from the news black hole does not mean I am disconnecting from society. I went to an anti-Trump rally a week ago and will definitely attend the nationwide No-Kings protest in October.
I found it very invigorating to spend two hours with a few dozen people who shared my concerns about global warming, fascism, and other issues. And for every person who yelled “fuck you” there were a dozen cars that beeped and waved and gave us thumbs up.
This was a small protest organized by the League of Women Voters. I only heard about it from a woman at my Zen group (more about that later). Still, I am now following them on FB, and they have a lot of events (they had a folk group performing one recent night to raise money for the families of deported Hispanics).
I am looking forward to seeing all the imaginative signs at the October rally.
While I am disconnecting from the news cycle, I am also taking action to make a difference.
I have been taking steps to completely disengage from old friends who have fallen prey to the MAGA ideology. There is no point in arguing with someone who denies Global Warming or the safety and effectiveness of Vaccines based SOLELY on their dedication to their Lord Donald Trump. And if these same people want to dehumanize my gay, black, immigrant, or non-Christian friends and relatives, fuck them; they are dead to me.
I was crushed a week ago when I found out that my YOGA instructor AND my THERAPIST are MAGA!
Now I need to find a new Yoga studio and a new therapist (possibly, as I am actually doing very well, spending less time watching/reading the news and more time practicing Zen).
The above meme refers to the people out there who say, “Oh, I don’t care about politics at all, there is no difference between Trump and the ‘woke” “. IGNORING masked men throwing U.S. citizens into unmarked vehicles and taking them to “detention” centers makes ONE complicit. You are either part of the solution or part of the problem.
Rather than responding to any offensive comments on my FB or Instagram feeds, I now just delete the comment and/or block/unfriend the offender. Rather than wasting energy on these individuals, I will make an effort to improve myself and help others.
I volunteered at numerous Buffalo Triathlon Club events this year (and am serving on the board), as well as at Ironman Lake Placid and two kids’ triathlons (Geneva and Cassadaga).
I will also be volunteering at Big Big Table, which is a pay-as-you-can restaurant in Buffalo. They are hosting a benefit dinner to kick off their grand reopening soon, and you’re invited to donate or attend.
https://givebutter.com/BigBigBash2025
And I will be volunteering on a medical mission to the Dominican Republic in March 2026 with a group of gynecologists who work at Sisters of Charity Hospital in Buffalo. More news about their big “Meat Raffle” fundraiser will be available soon.
A few days ago, I participated in a charity event for this worthy organization.
Okay. I think I have explained “disconnecting” without ignoring evil. Limiting my exposure to depressing, repetitive “news” and social media improves my mental health and allows me to devote energy to improving myself, others, and our planet.
*** Addition *** I still have to read emails and just saw this after publishing…. JOIN me next month!!!
“Discogs, the world’s leading music discovery and record collecting platform, has announced the launch of Dis/Connect, a global day to unplug from digital distractions and reconnect with the joy of listening to music. On Saturday, October 18, 2025, music lovers everywhere are invited to silence the scroll, skip the stream, and give their full attention to the ritual of listening to records.”
Back to “Where the Heart Beats”.
As I read it, I was amazed to discover that so many artists were influenced by his ideas. Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, George Segal, George Brecht, Frank Stella, Yoko Ono, Andy Warhol, John Cale, The Fluxus Movement, etc. etc.
If you visit the Whitney Museum in NYC, there will be so many on display. Rauschenberg explored the concept of “emptiness” in his white and black paintings.
Yoko Ono’s first husband (Toshi Ichiyanagi) was a modern composer who was friends with Cage, and they both attended Cage’s classes at The New School. She organized “happenings” by various contemporary artists and performers at her downtown loft. The Fluxus movement of art developed from these performance artists, but Ono was never a formal member. Toshi and Yoko arranged a month-long performance tour of Japan in 1962 for Cage and David Tudor (the pianist). Cage’s friend and patron Peggy Guggenheim joined them.
Cage made visits to several of the most important Zen temples, monasteries, and gardens. He also experienced the Zen-influenced Japanese creative and performing arts. Having visited several of these sights myself, I appreciate how influential they must have been to him.
On my car’s dashboard, I have a lovely pendant with the image of the gorgeous Cloud Dragon, painted on the ceiling of one of the world’s greatest Zen temples.
Cage also visited his old (now in his 90s) friend Suzuki in Kamakura, where he spent the last few years of his life. I spent a wonderful day in Kamakura with Alex in March. I wrote a travel photo blog about our day (I would definitely recommend reading it on a computer or tablet, as the photos are not done justice on a tiny phone screen).
And…the connections continue. I just set down my notes on the John Cage book to start writing and noticed that the coaster in my sister’s living room in Boston is… “The Great Wave Off Kanagawa”.
A woodblock done by Hokasai in 1831. This was done during the Edo period in Japan.
The Edo period,[a] also known as the Tokugawa period,[b] is the period between 1600 or 1603 and 1868[3] in the history of Japan, when the country was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and some 300 regional daimyo, or feudal lords. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was characterized by prolonged peace and stability, urbanization and economic growth, strict social order, isolationist foreign policies, and popular enjoyment of arts and culture.
Zen Buddhism has been closely associated with the Samurai as their rise to power in the Kamakura Period coincided with the arrival of and spread of Zen.
The Kamakura Period (1185–1333) was a pivotal era in Japanese history when the samurai class gained prominence and the first military government, or shogunate, was established in Kamakura, shifting power away from the imperial court. This feudal era saw significant Buddhist developments, including the rise of Zen and Pure Land schools, while also facing external threats like the Mongol invasions. The economy prospered, and Japanese art, particularly sculpture, underwent a renaissance of realism and dynamism, though the period ended due to internal weaknesses rather than external collapse.
The high-point of “Zen-Samurai” culture as we know it can probably be traced to the 8th shogun of the Ashikaga Clan, Yoshimasa (足利 義政, 1436 – 1490) who while being a dismal military commander, was a brilliant innovator of Zen aesthetics. Yoshimasa had a taste of artistic genius, and patronized Zen-influenced architecture, painting, poetry, and gardening, and so on, but also directly added his own spin. The “zen aesthetic” we all recognize is largely due to Yoshimasa who synthesized earlier Song-Dynasty culture through establishment of institutions by the Hojo Clan.
I watched Shogun (in Japanese with subtitles) before my trip. It was much better (and darker) than the Richard Chamberlin 1980 version. The series’s conclusion is the beginning of the Edo period, as a single Shogun will rule all of Japan.
In 2024, Shōgun became the first Japanese-language series to win a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series, with its first season winning 18 categories at the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards and 76th Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards, setting a new record as the most awarded single season of television in Emmy history.[3][4] It additionally received four Golden Globe Awards, including Best Television Series – Drama and acting wins for Sanada, Sawai, and Asano. The series also won a Peabody Award[5] at the 85th Annual Ceremony.
Because the Edo period was peaceful and undisturbed by the West (the Portuguese were expelled), it allowed for the flourishing of both decorative and performing arts in Japan. I only spent one day at the Japanese National Museum in Tokyo, but I could have gone for a few more days if I had the time, as the collection is so extensive that it fills several buildings.
Coincidentally (does coincidence exist…?), I just finished an audiobook about the Beatles, where I learned a lot more about Yoko Ono (both good and bad) than her brief cameo in the Cage book. I had always known that she was more than just “the girl who broke up the Beatles”.
*I am now writing at Boston’s Logan Airport, waiting for my flight home after a 3-day visit with family. I will NOT fall into the trap of blogging about my current activities in the midst of this extended essay. I have 45 minutes to write until the plane boards, and then I can continue on the flight. I plan to finish writing today and do a little editing tonight, and then “publish” this. A lot more “connections” keep coming up in my reading and life even today, but this is already too long.
Yoko Ono was born into one of Japan’s wealthiest industrial families and then came to the U.S. for college. I knew she had been an avant-garde artist and performer but had not realized that she had been married twice before John and had a daughter (Kyoko, the same name as my Japanese swim team friend) she basically abandoned when she took up with John. Although John had been a heavy user of LSD and other drugs, it was Yoko who got him addicted to Heroin, and he blamed that drug for all the spiteful things he said about Paul and the Beatles in the post-breakup interviews. Yoko had several miscarriages and one abortion in the early years of the marriage, while using heroin.
The Beatles book (which is very recent and refers at times to the Get Back movie) discusses in depth how the Beatles discovered (through George) Indian religion.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9735318/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk
I highly recommend watching it if you haven’t yet. It is like going back 50 years in a time Machine. In Get Back, one sees not just Yoko present at the recording session but also a group of Hare Krishnas whom George brought with him.
Initially, George took the Beatles to a retreat in England with a celebrity Transcendental Meditation “Yogi”. But on the first day there they learned that their manager and friend Brian Epstein had overdosed on sleeping pills. His father had recently died, and he had lifelong psychological problems, partially due to living as a closeted gay man (he told the Beatles of his orientation and was attracted to John).
In searching for the name of the Yogi, I found this great article about ANOTHER documentary about the Beatles, “The Beatles and India”. I will try to watch it soon.
The Beatles and India: the Documentary
FEBRUARY 25, 2022 ISSUE 157DISCIPLES OF SOUND
Written by Ray Chelstowski
This year The Beatles: Get Back documentary caught the eye of even casual fans. Over last year’s holiday break I found myself interrupting so many people who were watching it midway through the eight-hour long doc (sometimes to interview them for Copper). Those conversations began with the inevitable, “this film is amazing! And, there’s no narration!” The documentary was evidence of how timeless the Beatles’ music and their all-too-short story remain. However, The Beatles and India, a new documentary on the band, offers a different and equally remarkable line of sight into their incredible tale, one that I didn’t see coming. Drawing inspiration from Ajoy Bose’s book Across The Universe – The Beatles in India, the documentary is produced by British/Indian music entrepreneur Reynold D’Silva, and directed by Bose (his directorial debut) and cultural researcher Pete Compton. It was awarded Best Film Audience Choice and Best Music at the 2021 UK Asian Film Festival. httpv://youtu.be/so-AEgMk9OI The Beatles and India, now streaming on BritBox in North America, is a story about how Indian music and a few key figures and moments helped define some of the most important music the band would make.
No other influence except for 1950s American rock and roll had as profound an effect on the creation and outcome of the Beatles’ music than Indian music. As the film begins, we learn that when George Harrison’s mother was pregnant during the World War ll air-to-ground bombings in Liverpool, she’d listen to Indian music to calm her nerves. This continued after she delivered George into the world, and his childhood was colored through a home where that kind of sound would often be heard. It’s an important reference point to how the band discovered the genre at all. From here a remarkable tale unfolds. When the film ends, the Beatles’ journey of discovery no longer seems as strange as it did when I was a child. Then, when I would see photos of them dressed in traditional Indian garments, sitting on the ground, often in a moment of meditation, I’d wonder out loud: “how in the world did this happen?” Now it’s all clear, and as a fan, I’m thankful for the timeout they took to embrace this experience. In the end it would inform much of the music on one of my favorite records of theirs, the White Album. As a band, the Beatles were first introduced to Indian music while filming their 1965 film, Help!, which included a quite controversial scene with Indian musicians in a restaurant. Many Indians took offense to how certain well-respected symbols were used both commercially and comically in the film. That would quickly change as George Harrison would soon become a lifelong impassioned devotee of Indian music. Soon after wrapping the film, he bought his first sitar, befriended and studied under sitar master Ravi Shankar, and began recording with the instrument. It what can only be called a true musical revolution, Harrison linked the worlds of pop and Indian music on the Beatles song “Norwegian Wood,” which appears on the Rubber Soul album. Adding a sitar to that track was a groundbreaking moment from which Harrison would never look back. He fully immersed the Beatles into Indian music, a raga-rock sound that would be later heard on Beatles songs “Tomorrow Never Knows” and “Love You To” (Revolver) “Within You Without You” (Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band) and “The Inner Light” (the B-side of the “Lady Madonna” single). Fast forward to February of 1968, a time that found the Beatles searching for deeper meaning in their lives. Under the spiritual guidance of Indian guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the Beatles took a trip to Rishikesh, India to study transcendental meditation and set out on a path of what would hopefully be deep enlightenment. This trip is where the weight of the film resides. During this spiritual sabbatical the band was joined by their respective partners, along with musicians Donovan and Mike Love, as well as actress Mia Farrow and her sister Prudence. Through archival footage, recordings, photographs, and first-hand interviews, The Beatles and India comprehensively documents this remarkable moment in time, where specific Rishikesh experiences would inform the band’s music – and redefine the trajectory of pop culture.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, John Lennon, Paul McCartney and others.
To name a few examples: the song “Dear Prudence” was inspired by Mia Farrow’s sister Prudence and her apathy toward what she felt was the entire “camp experience” with famous people. She withdrew from most activities, preferring to instead stay by herself in her quarters. At breakfast one morning, Mike Love heard Paul McCartney playing around with what would become “Back in the U.S.S.R.,” and suggested including references to Russian girls, much in the way he had done with the Beach Boys with “California Girls.” The rest is history. After a wealthy mother and her adult son (the Maharishi was prone to inviting guests with deep pockets) returned to the ashram and revealed to everyone that they had just returned from a hunt where they’d killed a tiger, John Lennon wrote the song “The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill” to chastise them for openly mocking the teachings they had just learned under the Yogi. However, what the film touches on only lightly were the allegations of sexual improprieties against the Maharishi that inspired the song “Sexy Sadie.” John Lennon was apparently so disturbed by the allegations that he wrote the song with original lyrics that called the Yogi out by name. Those lyrics were changed, and so was the nature of the band’s relationship with the Maharishi thereafter.
The film carefully presents how the Beatles managed that delicate messaging with the press, knowing that their relationship with India and its music was much deeper than their time at that retreat. Some material that the retreat inspired lived beyond the White Album and would later appear on Lennon and Harrison solo outings. While at the ashram, Lennon began writing “Jealous Guy” and Harrison birthed “Not Guilty.” The film also captures simple fun facts about the trip and the personal situations of the band members at the time. Both McCartney and Lennon were in relationships that would soon end, and signs of demise are evident in the bored, often distracted looks of their partners. Ringo seemed to be into the trip to India because the band was. But as the living conditions worsened, his interest in heading back home heightened, and he soon left his mates behind to let them sort out their exits. His leaving readies the film for its eventual soft landing (which I won’t give away here).
George Harrison.
Paul McCartney, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, John Lennon, and others.
The “John and Paul” book goes into detail about how the Beatles first used LSD and then John became a very frequent (too frequent!) user (it sounded almost as bad as Syd Barrets story of daily LSD use). John had hoped that Indian meditation would allow him to escape his inner demons without LSD but he was VERY appalled about the Yogi’s sexual harassment of multiple women and on his return to England descended into drugs again.
“Shine On You Crazy Diamond” by Pink Floyd is a tribute to their former founding member, Syd Barrett, who left the band in 1968 due to mental health issues and heavy drug use. The “crazy diamond” refers to Barrett’s unique brilliance and childlike joy, which was sadly lost as his mental state deteriorated. The song expresses sadness and longing for Barrett, symbolizing childhood innocence and missed potential, and culminates in a musical eulogy for him.
At the same time that I was finishing up John Cage’s book and listening to the Beatles book, I had started attending the Buffalo Zen Buddhism Sanga one night a week. It has only been a month now, but I believe that practicing Zen meditation and studying its goals of improving one’s inner self and helping others will benefit me. In no way do I ever think that I am suited to train seriously at a monastery (I enjoy traveling the world too much), but I am going to the Catskills for a weekend of meditation and study in November. I want to use Zen to allow me to be on a mountaintop or a tropical beach in 15 years, not in a monastery!
Zen Buddhism seems a good fit for me as a lifelong atheist. It is quite different from Indian Buddhism, which “reveres” the Buddha and requires a “belief” in reincarnation.
Siddhartha Gautama lived in India around 500 BC, and after rejecting his wealthy upbringing and the traditional Indian religions of the time, he became the Buddha. His students and followers (like Jesus’ disciples) spread his ideas after his death, and a few hundred years later, people started to write down the teachings. Buddhism spread out of India into China around 100 AD, where it was adapted to fit in with the local Taoism and Confucianism. In approximately 600 AD, Ch’an Buddhism developed, and upon its arrival in Japan, it became known as “Zen”.
Introduction to Japan (c. 7th – 12th Century)
- c. 7th Century: Zen Buddhism was introduced to Japan, although it did not become widespread until later.
- 12th Century: The monks Eisai and Dogen traveled to China and brought Zen teachings back to Japan.
- 12th-13th Centuries: Eisai established the Rinzai school of Zen, and Dogen established the Soto school, which became influential during the Kamakura period (1185-1333).
Early Western Contact (Late 19th Century)
- 1893: The Japanese Zen monk Soyen Shaku visited the United States for the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago, raising the profile of Zen in the West.
Growth in the United States (20th Century)
- Early 20th Century: More Japanese teachers like Nyogen Senzaki and Sokei-an arrived in the US, establishing the foundations for Zen communities.
- 1950s-1960s: A surge of interest occurred outside Asian immigrant communities, partly due to popular books like T.D. Suzuki’s books, Alan Watts’ The Way of Zen (1957) and Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums (1957).
- 1959: Shunryu Suzuki arrived in San Francisco to lead Sokoji, further expanding Zen practice in the US.
I understand that most of these goals are not realistic, but I believe that they all fall under the “Do good for others” doctrine. Any time, energy, and money that I spend trying to help the anti-MAGA resistance is, if nothing else, good for my soul.
GREED+HATRED+DELUSION = TRUMP !
Well, that is enough about Zen for now. If I remain enamored with it after the retreat in November, I will, of course, write a lot more.
I lastly wanted to mention an excellent audiobook I recently listened to and the interesting connections it made for me.
I had not heard of MacFarlane before, but he is a well-known nature author.
Robert Macfarlane is a British writer and Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He is best known for his books on landscape, nature, place, people and language, which include The Old Ways, Landmarks, The Lost Words, Underland and Is a River Alive?
Not only is it an excellent book, but he is a GREAT narrator. I actually looked for who the narrator was since he was so good and was surprised to see it was the author.
The book is broken into three sections. The first is about exploring a cloud forest in Equador with a mushroom expert, the second a wetlands in southern India and the third a kayaking journey in northern Quebec.
I had been to a cloud forest in Costa Rica (on the slopes of a volcano) and to the rain forest in Equador (with Alex before our Galapagos cruise) when we tubed down a river. While Macfarlane was describing the search for rare psychedelic mushrooms I was doing a trail run near Lake Ontario (after a long open water swim) and saw these brightly colored mushrooms. Mushrooms were also a significant topic in the John Cage book, he considered mushroom hunting a form of meditation. He rarely did formal zazen.
John Cage, the avant-garde composer, was a passionate and skilled mushroom forager, identifier, and cook, with his obsession beginning in the 1930s. His lifelong dedication to fungi was deeply intertwined with his artistic philosophy, which emphasized spontaneity and sound. Cage was a co-founder of the New York Mycological Society and maintained a close connection between his work in music and mycology, even incorporating his mycological interests into compositions and writings, such as Mushrooms et Variationes.
I thought about “being more zen” when I did the trail run because I realized that my speed would be slower, and my Strava “friends” would see my slower pace. But of course, it doesn’t matter how fast I run; from a fitness standpoint, I get just as good a workout running slower on dirt, grass, or a beach as when I run fast on pavement. Running on the soft trails, smelling the woods, and seeing a chipmunk or interesting plant is much more fulfilling than running on a road with cars zooming by. And I 100% should not “care” what anyone else thinks about my pace on a run. One of the main things I hope to gain from Zen practice is developing a less self-conscious attitude about how others perceive me. I need to concentrate much more on being a good person than worrying about how others perceive me.
The next section of the book, about southern India, also evoked a connection in me. My friend Krishna’s family is from Kerala, and I had met his parents and spoken with them extensively after listening to “The Covenant of Water.” Verghese wrote “Cutting for Stone”, an outstanding medical novel decades ago, and I have been a fan of his ever since.
Abraham Verghese is an Ethiopian-American physician and author of Malayali descent. He is the Linda R. Meier and Joan F. Lane Provostial Professor of Medicine, Vice Chair for the Theory & Practice of Medicine, and Internal Medicine Clerkship Director at Stanford University Medical School.
Malayali people are a Dravidian ethnic group from the Malabar Coast of India, predominantly residing in the state of Kerala and the Union Territory of Lakshadweep. They are known for their distinct culture, shaped by centuries of international trade, particularly in spices, and their high regard for education, which has led to strong ties with diaspora communities worldwide. Key characteristics often include a blend of Hindu, Muslim, and Christian traditions, with the latter tracing back to the Apostle Thomas in 52 AD.
I was so amazed to learn that St. Thomas actually traveled to southwest India soon after Jesus’ death. His attempts to convert the locals were not popular, and he was eventually killed, but those he did convert continued to practice Christianity for another 2000 years!
Sadly, Verghese chose for some reason to narrate this book himself, and he is awful! He barely changes his voice at all between the various characters, making it difficult to distinguish whether he is portraying a British man or an Indian woman, and thus, it is hard to follow the plot. This is a good example of HUBRIS. Just because you are a talented author, a physician, etc. etc. does not mean you can do EVERYTHING well. And all the people at the publishing house, his friends, and relatives must have been reluctant to say, “Excuse me, but this audiobook will be so MUCH better if read by a qualified professional.” The Emperor has no clothes! And no voice 🙂
The third part of the book resonated with me because I had planned to go on a campervan trip to northeast Canada (I have never been north of Montreal) this summer with Alex and Fifa (she IS a Labrador…), but my “D” and Alex’s work schedule made it impossible. I did go kayaking in the shadow of Whiteface Mountain in Lake Placid at least.
Another book I read recently was “Flashlight” by Susan Choi (and it just got shortlisted for the Booker Prize!).
It definitely merits the nomination. Like many of the books I put on hold at the library, when it finally arrived on my Kindle, I couldn’t remember what it was about at all. At first, I thought it might be a sci-fi book. However, it is actually a fascinating book about a Korean-Japanese American family, which connects well with the John Cage book. All of its insights into the life of immigrants and outsiders were wonderful and, of course, made me think about my time in Japan and our current anti-immigrant hate campaign by the far-right Trumpers.
Okay! That is enough. I could keep writing for hours more about Interconnectedness because, as the DUDE says….
Thanks for reading!!!! 🙏🏼
Here is the Book review.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
July 22, 2012 Books of the Times by BEN RATLIFF
“Where the Heart Beats” is a book about a man learning to use and trust the void. It’s a kind of love story about overcoming the need for love.
Written by Kay Larson, who for 14 years was the art critic for New York magazine, it describes John Cage’s philosophical awakening through Zen Buddhism, which changed not only the sort of music he composed but, seemingly, everything he did and said. Cage’s music and his interactions have been documented in many other books, but what makes “Where the Heart Beats” different is that it centers first on the ideas behind the work: why he sought them, when he came upon them, and where and how he used them. Only secondarily is it about his notated and copyrighted scores, and Cage’s place within the history of music (if indeed that is the place he ought to occupy).
For more than 40 years — from the time of his 1951 talks at the Club, a loft space on East Eighth Street in Manhattan opened by the sculptor Philip Pavia, until his death in 1992 — Cage often found himself around devoted scribes and live microphones. He was an apothegm slinger; he was unstoppable. “I have to get out of here,” the sculptor Richard Lippold, Cage’s neighbor in a run-down Lower East Side building during the early 1950s, told the composer Morton Feldman. “John is just too persuasive.”
In his filmed and recorded interviews you almost always encounter a man who seems born into supreme contentment: he listened, asked questions and had a good, hard, helpless laugh. But in his writings he could sometimes be bizarrely dogmatic, even in his opposition to dogma, and Ms. Larson portrays the younger Cage more this way: agitated, uncool, a walking emergency.
In the late 1930s and early ‘40s he was a young composer who favored rhythm over harmony and the chaotic promise of random, atmospheric noise over the grammar of Western classical music with its “endless arrangements of the old sounds.” But he hadn’t, in either case, completely figured out why. He was unhappy in his work and otherwise; the words “crisis” and “suffering” come up often in the first half of Ms. Larson’s account.
The book relates Cage’s solutions for all the disjunctions in his life, including what Ms. Larson, treading lightly, portrays as his acceptance of his homosexuality. (He was married to Xenia Kashevaroff, the daughter of a Russian priest, for 10 years; he worked with the choreographer Merce Cunningham from the 1940s on and lived with him starting in 1971, though he rarely spoke on the record about it.) He sought to release himself from self-expression in his art and even from emotional expression in his life. “I discovered,” he said in a late-period interview, “that those who seldom dwell on their emotions know better than anyone else just what an emotion is.”
In any case, learning the Zen mind was Cage’s major solution. Daisetz T. Suzuki, the Japanese writer and scholar, came to North America in 1950 on a tour sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation, and Cage attended some of Suzuki’s lectures in New York. The lessons he absorbed — particularly one on the ego and the outside world, reconstructed and well narrated by Ms. Larson — solidified notions he’d already been swimming toward through his early studies in harmony with Arnold Schoenberg; his interest in the ideas of noise and anti-art taken from Futurism and Dada; and his readings of Christian and Hindu mystics. What he learned from Suzuki forms this book’s core, and even its structure.
Ms. Larson is on sure ground discussing Cage’s aesthetic world, particularly his connection with New York visual artists from the ’40s and ’50s. But she is also a practicing Buddhist, and she presents Cage almost as a figure in a parable.
The book is meticulous about dates, encounters and critical receptions. Still, there is no mistaking this for a straightforward biography. It concentrates on the most important period of Cage’s philosophical discoveries and starts drawing to a close in the early 1960s, when the composer still had more than a third of his life and work ahead of him.
Much of Ms. Larson’s story takes place inside Cage’s head, so she often has to speculate, with recourse to his interviews and writings, on what he may have been thinking. She imagines him picking up Suzuki’s “Essays in Zen Buddhism: First Series” and reading its first sentence. “How could he not instantly turn the page?” she writes. “From then on, throughout the introduction — and how could Cage not have seen it? — Suzuki seems to be reading Cage’s mind and speaking into his ear.”
Ms. Larson’s speculative soul reading is useful but perilous — not so much because it risks misrepresenting Cage’s thinking, but because it can sometimes generate homely, overempathetic prose. (“The heart-issues that Cage had never resolved were now beating like the undead on the locked doors of his awareness.”) It creates a solid heroic narrative around an awful lot of aesthetic and spiritual information. (This is the third of three excellent books on Cage to appear in less than two years; the other two are Kenneth Silverman’s traditional biography, “Begin Again,” and “No Such Thing as Silence,” by the music critic Kyle Gann, focused entirely on the creation and significance of the piece “4’33.” ”)
After an early interest in counterpoint and tone rows Cage became less interested in a fixed outcome for his music, instead creating structures in which he radically yielded control. The title of Ms. Larson’s book, taken from an essay Cage wrote in the late 1950s, refers to the blood pumping we inevitably hear when we try to experience what we call silence. He called that condition “zero”; for him it was similar to the Buddhist notion of shunyata, which Suzuki characterized as the “Absolute Void.”
Cage wanted to capture the void in his music. Within zero he found chance and indeterminacy, which guided such key works as “Music of Changes,” composed according to hundreds of decisions made with the I Ching; “Imaginary Landscape No. 4,” played by 24 performers on 12 radios, a piece whose output depends on what the airwaves are producing; and the notorious silent piece “4’33,” ” written for a pianist who never touches the keys.
He loved maxims, anecdotes, lessons and manifestoes. You encounter a lot of them here, and they are not breezed over: Ms. Larson writes elaborately on the teachings of Sri Ramakrishna, the “Huang Po Doctrine of Universal Mind,” the ancient Flower Garland Sutra and Heart Sutra of Mahayana Buddhism. These can slow down a reader who’s more interested in the foreground than the background, but the author stays gentle; she shows you explicitly how their ideas echoed through his work.
There’s plenty of fascinating paradox in this book. It’s about music that implicitly criticizes “music” and silence that isn’t “silent”; it’s also about creating the intention to move toward non-intention. “We really do need a structure,” Cage wrote in his “Lecture on Nothing,” “so we can see we are nowhere.”
_____________________________________________________________________________________________