Sometimes it’s really hard not to feel incredibly jaundiced about everything. The harder you try to get toward your objective the further away it gets. There are some hopeful signs on the horizon its true. People can be rather disappointing when they behave exactly as predicted, but predictable they certainly are. More and more we seem to live in a joyless environment where everything with any spark of originality is treated like some unpleasant boil that requires lancing. I seem to be coming to a pivital moment in my life, when I will either going on to greater things or fall flat on my face. Strangely enough it seems unimportant now as if I am observing events happening in someone else’ s life seen at a slight distance. I do have friends though and that’s a good thing.
My old school has Elliott has a website
My old school has a website::
I discovered this quite by chance as one of my old teachers Edmund Hodges  had sent me a message on Friends Reunited.
“Welcome to the Elliottonian Web Site. This site is here to complement the Elliott School’s ‘E Group’ and for the enjoyment of anyone associated with the school. This may include Teachers, Pupils and Staff, both present and past. Although the Elliott School has been located at Putney for over fifty years, its roots lay at Southfields and are over a hundred years old.
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We have resisted the temptation to present a ‘flashy’ web site, opting instead for an easy to follow, link driven layout. Below you will find links to the relevant sections of the site, these may be further divided depending on content. Remember, it will only grow if people are prepared to contribute their interesting pictures and recollections”.
Mind over matter or mind without matter?
OK, little electro-chemical impulses form the stuff of our thoughts and so presumably our very consciousness is a bunch of electrical patterns, so my thoughts and my feelings are the software running on the squishy bits inside my skull. So could my consciousness exist outside my body? If it could would it be able to reside somewhere else.
Could it ever end up matrix style in a machine? If what I know as me, that which gazes out through the windows of my eyes is not the body but the body is just the house my mind lives in then could mind travel on its own to other places? Would I have anyway of knowing that what I perceive as real is the same reality as others experience?
When I shuffle off the mortal coil is all that information lost as the electrochemical stuff powers down. Who knows. There is no beer in the fridge either. With this amazing human mind perhaps I could imagine a beer then imagine drinking it which would certainly be more economical though less satisfying than fizzy liquid from a cold place. I am trying that experiment as I type and so far its not working other than I am getting rather thirsty. Yet an imagined beer ought to taste as good as an actual one surely?
In places in the universe where time runs at a different rate would our little electrical patterns live for ever, perhaps orbiting a rotating black hole?
Gestalt prayer
The “Gestalt prayer” is a 56-word statement by psychotherapist Fritz Perls that is taken as a classic expression of Gestalt therapy as way of life model of which Dr. Perls was a founder.
The key idea of the statement is the focus on living in response to one’s own needs, without projecting onto or taking introjects from others. It also expresses the idea that it is by fulfilling their own needs that people can help others do the same and create space for genuine contact; that is, when they “find each other, it’s beautiful”.
Text of “prayer”
I do my thing and you do your thing.
I am not in this world to live up to your expectations,
And you are not in this world to live up to mine.
You are you, and I am I, and if by chance we find each other, it’s beautiful.
If not, it can’t be helped.
(Fritz Perls, 1969)
Impact and legacy
The prayer is well known in gestalt and psychotherapy circles, where it is generally taken as a summarising statement of the philosophy of personal independence central to gestalt therapy. This philosophy still attracts critics, generally arguing that interpersonal relationships require real, hard work to maintain. Supporters counter that an attitude of independence does not refute this, but rather encourages people to realise that relationships need not be founded on obligation or expectation. The prayer remains popular in general culture, although the last line is sometimes omitted. In academic discussion, it sometimes acts as a starting point for debate around issues of autonomy and interdependence.
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Why do people plan to fail so often?
Ego is the biggest problem. Why do so many people want others to fail. What is it about human nature that makes folks expend so much energy on trying to stop others from succeeding, instead of sorting out whats really bugging them instead. Jealousy perhaps? Why is necessary to expend so much energy getting around the roadblocks that these people create. Answers on a postcard please.
The vanity of knowledge
Ecclesiastes 2:14
I have seen everything that is done under the sun;and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind.
2:17
And I applied my mind to wisdom and to know madness and folly, and I perceived that this also is but a striving after wind.
For in wisdom there is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.
2:15
Then I said to myself “what befalls the fool will befall me also; why for most I been so very wise?”. And I said to myself this also is vanity. For of the wise man as of the fool there is no enduring remembrance, seeing the days to come all will have been long forgotten. How the wise man dies just like the fool! So I hated life, because what is done under the sun is grievous to me; for all is vanity and a striving after wind.
Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life
Confucius gave his career advice more than 2500 years ago, but truer words of wisdom have never been spoken. How many of us began our careers, not because of passion we felt for the vocation, but through the well-intended advice of parents, teachers, a college counselor, or just because the job was available when we needed it? We may have through at the start, “This first job is just a start, something temporary until I figure out what I really want to do…” Then, before you know it, 5 (or more) years have passed, you’re making pretty good money, and the thought of changing careers is a distant memory. How many of us are truly passionate about what we do for a living? What does your temperament have to do with it? Are Idealists happier than, say, Rationals when it comes to career choice? What makes Idealists satisfied with their careers, and conversely, if they’re not currently satisified, what would help?
a fly in the ointment of existence
Am I mearly a fly in the ointment of existence? I have had a couple of recent knock backs that have rocked me a bit.That plus a dose of flu and and a new level of insight have left me wondering what the best course of action is? I have been looking at jobs outside the music arena and I have applied for around 30 in about 2 weeks. So far out of 30 the score is 1 interview, I canceled interview and 2 no thank you very much. I understand that at present it takes about 200 applications to get a job, so I guess I need to pull my finger out a bit really. I like to cling to the possibly misguided notion that I do have some saleable skills but of course these may simply be delusional episodes.
Perfection or sterilty
Bob Dylan has got a funny voice, wait I here you scream. Sacrilege! OK he is a genius, but he has got very a characteristic sound and manner that might well cause him to be rejected from the X factor auditions without a moments notice. Tom Waites? OK so my point is this. Should everything be pasteurized and homogenized and diluted and refined to the point of blandness to reach some anodyne notion of popular art. Well if its art no, but what if its entertainment with only a small a for art. Is it worth being true to your artistic conception or should you just take the money and run,(or just walk very fast without drawing too much attention to oneself) and what if you just want to be an artist?
The Story so far
Well fans (ironic) it could be going a little better right now I have to admit, but you can’t blame me for trying. I was on the radio in St Albans with the 3 5ths of Elephant Shelf and we managed to get 3 tracks played from the album which can’t be bad, and that was fun. We also got 3 plugs for our gig on Saturday at the Mermaid too. There is a guy that wants to represent the Shelf in Holland which might be useful and lots of radio stations playing the album out Sur la Manch so that’s got to be good.
Personal circumstances are looking very risky now though. I have applied for about 30 jobs and not a sniff so far so one is getting in to a bit of a panic and its grinding me down just a tad.  I have seriously considered bankruptcy but that could be a bit difficult under the circumstances, but it might come to that. Its not quite where I though I would be when I left the Civil Service about 2 years ago.
My brilliant career has not quite materialized. Something has to happen soon.