Read this passage in “Awaken”, a Buddhist magazine published by Kong Meng San Phor Kark See Monastery. The title of the article is “Training the Mind”, a compilation of teachings extracted from “The Teachings of Ajahn Chah” :

“So we say that the mental activity is like the deadly poisonous cobral. If we don’t interfere with a cobra, it simply goes its own way. Even though it may be extremely poisonous, we are not affected by it; we don’t go near it or take hold of it, and it doesn’t bite us. The cobra does what is natural for a cobra to do. That’s the way it is. If you are clever you’ll leave it alone.

Let be your liking and your disliking, the same way as you don’t interfere with the cobra. So, one who is intelligent will have this kind of attitude towards the various moods that arise in the mind. When goodness arises, we let it be good, but we know also. We understand its nature. And, too, we let be the not-good, we let it be according to its nature. We don’t take hold of it because we don’t want anything. We don’t want evil, neither do we want good. We want neither heaviness nor lightness, happiness nor suffering. When, in this way, our wanting is at an end, peace is firmly established.”

Once in a while I discover music that catches me immediately when I hear it. The music of Egberto Gismonti is an example.

Egberto Gismonti was born on 5 Dec 1947. He trained as pianist and composer for 15 years with Nadia Bouglanger and Jean Barlaque in Paris. With Baden Powell as a decisive influence, Gismonti studied the guitar in 1967 so that he could play choros.

Information taken from “Masters of Jazz Guitar: The Story of the Players and Their Music” by Charles Alexander.

Magico

Dança das Cabeças

This was composed after he spent time with the Xingui Indians in the Amazon rain forest in the interior of Brazil in 1976 and played with a multi-string (12 string?) classical guitar.

In the videos below, he plays the piano.

7 Anéis

Palhaço

Frevo

Silence

“Scientists have discovered that certain parts of the brain become deactivated when we’re in love, including areas linked with negative emotions, planning, critical social assessment, the evaluation of trustworthiness and fear.

Biological studies have found that this phase of reduced cognitive function, during which faults are ignored, can last from one to two and a half years. This temporary state of delusion has a vital human function. If we immediately saw all our partner’s faults, we would be less likely to form a stable relationship in which to produce children.

And it is just as well that it is short-lived: romantic love is has an enormous metabolic cost. “I think romantic love evolved to enable people to focus their mating energy onto just one person at a time, thereby conserving mating time and energy,” says Dr Fisher. “It’s not conducive to real life to live in this state for 20 years because you’re distracted by it, you can’t think of other things, you forget what you are doing, you probably don’t eat properly, you certainly don’t sleep well and you go through highs and lows.”

Problems can arise when the pink mist eventually lifts and we see our loved one for what they really are – as flawed as we are. It may to wise to wait until brain function is fully restored before making a decision to marry. By then you may well feel sufficiently attached to your partner to put up with their irritating habits. “I think attachment evolved to tolerate someone at least long enough to rear a child together,” says Dr Fisher. But don’t dismay that the best bit is over once lucidity returns. Couples can feel peaks of romantic love throughout their relationship.”

I must remind myself:

“Research suggests that to help maintain a successful relationship you should say five positive things to your partner for each negative statement about them.

...Researchers found that the first three minutes of a married couple’s argument indicate whether they will get divorced within six years. Those who engage in critical statements such as “you always” or “you never” are more likely to split up.”

Source.

The prayer war

How to bring about the relaxation response

Take time to breathe

For the rest of my life, I need to:

focus on and do one thing at a time

pay attention, to people, intentions and surroundings

control my emotions, and say the right thing at the right time to the right person

sleep and wake early

Best friend and I agree (a rare occurrence?) that the last item on the list is the secret to success. He just had his senior recital. I hope it went well. Congrats! Also, he is googlable

Check out this picture and review of a past event!

I will be busy till next Feb/Mar. This means very limited blogging and guitar playing. You can expect very little updates from now till then.

Belated record for future reminder.

I had lunch with themuser 3 days before I registered my marriage. As usual, I was complaining (You may be amused to know that my best friend once bought a shirt for me that said “Official Member of the Piss & Moan About Everything Club”). That time I was complaining about the lack of any achievement in my life. About how I can’t play the guitar as well as I wanted, about how tough and pointless working through Ted Greene’s Chord Chemistry and Modern Chord Progressions seem. About how I could only say I have a degree, a job, a wife-to-be and good friends.

And then themuser reminded me that what I had was all the things that some people wanted “That’s all some people want!”. And it put things in perspective for me for a while. And so that I’ll continue to remember it, I’ll blog it down as a reminder.

As for Ted Greene and the guitar, themuser (echoing my wife) reminded me that some things just have to take time and won’t happen overnight. As for seemingly pointless exercises, he reminded me that such exercises were how we learnt language and math way back when we were much younger.

Anyway, here’s an appropriate place to insert some reminders from Mick Goodrick’s The Advancing Guitarist: Applying Guitar Concepts & Techniques, a book I borrowed from the library.

It’s important to understand how very complicated the guitar really is. Also, how vast are its possibilities. This way, we can cultivate patience and stop worrying because we think we arean’t learning fast enough. (To really know the guitar has to take a lot of time. Why be in such a hurry?)

If you truly love what your’re doing, you can handle failure or you can handle success. (In fact, I would think that’s the only way anyone could handle success.)

Don’t be afraid to look at the musicians you are playing with. Don’t be afraid to look at the people you’re playing to. And even if you are afraid, look anyhow. You’ll learn much.

Everyone may not have the ability to become a great guitarist; but everyone does have the ability to improve, to get better. To me, that’s more important.

Playing “beyond yourself”: When you play great for other people, (especially when it’s with other musicians) it’s a gift (for everyone!). Be thankful. Realise not so much that you did it, but rather that it must have been needed at the time (or at least, possible at the time)

Musical materials and the guitar are somewhat inert. A person’s learning process is very organic. When we forget about our own learning process, we run into trouble. Sometimes we expect too much of ourselves. Music can become a very neurotic activity. When this happens, it’s no use saying that it should be different from what it is. Don’t think about what it should be. Look at what it is! When you see sometheing very clearly, it practically changes itself:

Attitude A:
Practicing even 8ths. “Those aren’t even! That sounds terrible! I can’t do it! Got to try harder! Maybe I don’t have what it takes…?”

Attitude B:
Practicing even 8ths. “Those aren’t even. Let me study very closely exactly how they aren’t even. Hmmm! Very interesting…!”

Patience is so important. We can’t help the fact that we usually want everything right now. However, experience usually teaches us at least not to expect it. Things unfold at their own pace; they take time. Just hang in there. Do what you see needs to be done. Work on what you see needs work. Make it as interesting as you can for yourself. Who cares how long it takes? Don’t look for results. (If you work on what needs work, results will take care of themselves) Let them surprise you! Music is infinitely perfectable. It just takes a lot of work, a lot of time, and as much love as you can find.

Regarding the last two points, of course it’s way easier to doubt yourself and say that you don’t have what it takes, so that you can spare yourself the serious effort and just give up. Which is why success is only for serious practitioners, it only comes after much hard work, requiring “patience and determination” as Ted Greene puts it. It’s tough to be scientific and objective about improving my guitar playing but it’s necessary. No other choice if I want to improve, I guess.

Which brings me to a 4 month old Scientific American article Secrets of the Expert Mind. I quote:

The one thing that all expertise theorists agree on is that it takes enormous effort to build these structures in the mind. Simon coined a psychological law of his own, the 10-year rule, which states that it takes approximately a decade of heavy labor to master any field. Even child prodigies, such as Gauss in mathematics, Mozart in music and Bobby Fischer in chess, must have made an equivalent effort, perhaps by starting earlier and working harder than others.

...Ericsson argues that what matters is not experience per se but “effortful study,” which entails continually tackling challenges that lie just beyond one’s competence. That is why it is possible for enthusiasts to spend tens of thousands of hours playing chess or golf or a musical instrument without ever advancing beyond the amateur level and why a properly trained student can overtake them in a relatively short time. It is interesting to note that time spent playing chess, even in tournaments, appears to contribute less than such study to a player’s progress; the main training value of such games is to point up weaknesses for future study.

Even the novice engages in effortful study at first, which is why beginners so often improve rapidly in playing golf, say, or in driving a car. But having reached an acceptable performance—for instance, keeping up with one’s golf buddies or passing a driver’s exam—most people relax. Their performance then becomes automatic and therefore impervious to further improvement. In contrast, experts-in-training keep the lid of their mind’s box open all the time, so that they can inspect, criticize and augment its contents and thereby approach the standard set by leaders in their fields.

Hmmm, I reminded of a conversation with my friend YY, he said that it’s possible to be within the top 5% or 10% of any field with hard work but to be within the top 1% requires some innate talent or genius.

I created a new category for all the quotes/stories that struck me and that I want to keep as a reminder to myself. This quote by St. Francis de Sales is the first quote to be slotted into the new category.

The enemy often tries to make us attempt and start many projects so that we will be overwhelmed with too many tasks, and therefore achieve nothing and leave everything unfinished. Sometimes he even suggests the wish to undertake some excellent work that he foresees we will never accomplish. This is to distract us from the prosecution of some less excellent work that we would have easily completed. He does not care how many plans and beginnings we make, provided nothing is finished.

Source.

From time to time, I realise I have a very lousy attitude towards life and work. And then I get reminded of the people who have it far worse than me in many areas but yet have infinitely better attitude. And then, for a brief moment that I wish could always stay longer with me, I gain a better perspective.

I used to swim at IE, along Dunearn Road. When I see disabled atheletes swimming, I’m reminded of how lucky I am, with a “normal” body. And yet, how useless I am, with a “normal” body, I’m still doing less with it than those disabled atheletes I see swimming; despite my “normal” body, I still have a far more defeatist attitude is compared to them. I always tell myself, learn from their attitude, their fighting spirit.

And then there is Jason Becker, whom I read about two nights ago. Check out the documentary here. How he coped with being inflicted by ALS at the height of his career with David Lee Roth, how, with ALS, he painstakingly composed music one note at a time, using a special software that allows his eye movement to move a cursor and his chin to click a mouse, and how despite it all, he never gave up and managed to maintain a sense of serenity without being beaten down and defeated by circumstances beyond his control. Read about his experience here, about how his family never gave up on him and devised an alphabhet board that relied on his eye movements to communicate with him when it would have been easier to just give up.

This post is for my future reminder and inspiration.

Feeling unusually emotional and expressive, yet mute. Had a long and emotional conversation with the love of my life. Read through my journals, got reminded of my past loves and wanted to post some passages here. Was very inspired to do something similar to what Blinkymummy did here, except that mine would be in the form of text messages exchanged. Probably not a good idea, especially when I’m very tired and slightly intoxicated. Also don’t want the love of my life to feel uncomfortable.

Nonetheless, here’s something about a different kind of love. My lips formed a wistful smile when I read “Can always see the depth of his affection for me in his eyes when we do the “brudder blahder” hand clasp”, something I wrote on 28 Apr 2002. A reminder of what I stand to lose and what I should recover. 2005 has been a watershed year for me. Sigh. But more of that another time.

Here’s also something from 2002, 11 June 2002, to be exact:

“Life is fucking mysterious. For the longest time ever, I wasn’t. Then I am. Like right now, conscious and scribbling. And then for an infinity, I won’t be anymore. Can’t stand it man.”

Also found this passage from the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius in my journal:

“Observe how transient and trivial is all mortal life; yesterday a drop of semen, tomorrow a handful of ashes. So spend these fleeting moments on earth as Nature would have you spend them, and then go to your rest with a good grace, as an olive falls in its season, with a blessing for the earth that bore it and a thanksgiving to the tree that gave it life.”

During the last two nights, anxiety of the inevitable obliteration of my consciousness visited me during my couch naps. Life is short and unpredictable and yet I spend so much of it working so hard for things that can be so easily taken away from me.

I have arrived safely in Amsterdam as scheduled. It’s not as cold as I expected. Stuff is really expensive here, one can of Redbull costs 2.50 euros. A bottle of water costs the same. If I keep converting back to SGD, I’ll never buy anything here.

I also managed to get in touch with some people I met in Amsterdam in 2000. I hope to meet both of them next week. Im looking forward to meeting Brigitte, the last Dutch person I saw before I left Amsterdam in 2000. I still remember the cafe we went to before I left Holland.

It’s a strange experience remembering certain experiences that have been buried deep in my mind since four years ago. To relive certain sensations for the second time in your life is really weird, especially when those sensations were so vivid the first time but have faded due to time. It’s scary how little of my life I remember, especially those moments that I have experienced most vividly and intensely. I recalled walking and cycling routes and how on the first day of my arrival, I helped a Korean girl lug her luggage for almost an hour to where I lived.

I hope this holiday will turn out well. I enjoy taking a break from the worries, stress and routine of life and work in Singapore. It’s great to be with my best friends and clear my mind in a foreign place. We are staying in a very nice (and expensive) place in Nieumarkt, a very central and convenient location. The history of the apartment goes back to 1619. It used to be a place where sailing ropes were made.

Final random things that I wanted to record but had no time to:

– The stress I had before I left for Amsterdam, feels like I almost had a heart attack. – Two good things that happened to me (regarding my new acquaintance FF) before I left for Amsterdam but which is not for public consumption. It’s a real joy talking and hanging out with FF. The things she says I’ve never heard before. Too bad I can’t put them down here. – An unpleasant exchange with Andre. – Meeting a random person who offered me a 15% discount for my clothes purchases. Cheryl Lye, remind me to tell you this story. You’ll have a good giggle.

Anyway, I doubt I’ll have time to update this blog till I get back. But I’ll try.