Art Prose & Rhyme Blog

Neil was born on 12. November 1945. He is doubtlessly not only a member of that so-called baby-boomer flower-power hippie generation but perhaps one of its most significant icons and ardent grassroots initiator, perpetuator and till present an undaunted incarnation of the memorable and perhaps historically the most significant ethos of this period in American history. A charming rebel with a cause and someone with whom one can identify without provoking admonishing looks from one’s school teachers or critical peers or professors! In fact a biologist (an ECU professor of biology, Jason Bond) has even named a species of a spider (Myrmekiaphila neilyoungi) after him!^* He is above all known as a song-writer, singer, guitarist and as a member of the band Crosby Stills Young and Nash, a band that according to my view holds a unique position unrivaled from any other band in the socially and politically significant phase of American history, a decade of significant social changes that they have rendered in a kind of hymn Teach your Children and that Bob Dylan immortalized in his song The Times are a’ Changing!

No doubt Americans and more so the Media in USA have retained a kind of folksy collective memory of the times but that must not and in this case certainly does not do full justice to the historical significance of this phenomena. For a historian of the future in fact this aspect may be almost irrelevant. Subject to rather rapidly changing fads and easily discarding one attire for another, like a chameleon changing hues with every little superficial change in the surroundings, this McLuhan media has no time or economical incentive to reflect upon deeper social reformatory changes that such artistic creations may induce, being as it is in present decade predominantly occupied with cash-economy icons and celebrities and their nowadays generally private and only from few fans shared obsessive neurosis, rather than great social transformations that sweep and spill over the National boundaries and cultures, something that did characterize this grass root moment that Neil, a Canadian by the way, was a part and parcel of and on whose basic tenants and visions it seems only a few besides him have ever doubted nor lost sight of. The message of this grassroots movement was amidst others a truly liberal brotherhood of mankind and freedom from patriarchal and imperialistic hegemonies! It was unlike today less occupied with ego display and the show off of private possessions and brands, the blue jeans were a symbol of egalitarian values and ease, comfort and practical functionality in contrast to the costly brand-stamped peacock feathers of the Yuppies of today. A cyclic fact of history maybe _ reminiscent of roman toga being replaced with King Henry’s or Emperor Akbar’s baroque appendages.

More significant historically, seen from my perspective is the legacy that crossed the Atlantic ocean and induced an empathetic resonance in other countries, especially amongst the receptive academic populations of the geo-politically reformed Nations, who were beginning to question everything inherited from history and even the norms of the current dominant systems. Lyndon B. Johnson and Nixon had played well into the hands of these hard headed questioning young rebellious generation _ more liberal than the politically and socially organized liberals of USA or for that matter England and unfortunately at certain times and certain places, although well acquainted with Gandhi not completely reluctant to take recourse to violence. A social inner transformation found its political voice in anti-war slogans. Vietnam became a symbol of something that rallied people around the globe. Protests from Students in Europe and England were the making the headlines in the media. In countries like Germany it would influence the initial stirrings in certain educated young people, that would ultimately lead to their cohesion in an political organ, the green party, whose one CEO Oscar Fischer rose to become the foreign Minister of Germany albeit not without alienating many grassroots members of his party. Live concerts with Peace as the primary universal message were becoming more and more popular. Long hair seemed to usher in a more feminine touch to most of these predominantly patriarchal societies. It was a grassroots protest, almost spontaneous even as the industry would later fully gulp this phenomenal uprising and make it mainstream by incorporating it within a lucrative financial system. Now some old hippies started buying castles and mansions instead of living in communes as they metamorphosed from song writers to industry mega-dollar-stars freaking in five star hotels. True some bands like the Grateful Dead never changed or turned disloyal to their fans or to their tenants and message but sure most of them were easy meat, and all of them today are basically only an extension of that specific branch of commerce, dedicated to increase in wealth for a few. Many Americans were not aware of the floods of social change they were ushering in other societies. History will perhaps view this phenomenon, probably never to be repeated from a different perspective, than the one from which the Americans viewed it then or still do. Woodstock was certainly aka Saturnalia but somehow also a semi Christian-Pagan gathering, somewhat similar to what happened in Rome during the first grassroots propagation of Christianity, whose members however were prosecuted at first and really did not have big festivals to celebrate their social communions nor did they have so successful poets and songwriters spreading the message.

Crosby Stills Young and Nash, themselves probably not so greatly convinced from their specific and destined role here and comparing themselves to other highly established bands of the times, however would become the greatest, profoundest and the most sublime voice of this moment, this decade and this phenomenon. No, not the Beatles, not Joan Baez, not Jimi Hendrix, not the Grateful Dead, not Joni Mitchell, not Paul Simon but sure enough this band. Bob Dylan did not specifically give voice to this phenomena. More versatile and universal, even if imbued with a geopolitical predominantly American ethos, Bob Dylan is consistently occupied with general human issues and times. Not necessarily constrained within this epoch, that he has certainly also given a global voice. He is equally at home in the old testament as he is in the sandy dunes of El Dorado and certainly not a rebel in the usual sense of the term! Yes the real juice of this decade and the spirit of the generation flows through the songs and lyrics and the music of Crosby, Stills, Young and Nash. A band that was in complete resonance with what the Woodstock festival implied. No doubt today any million-dollar Rock-Star or Music Industry Mogul can arrange for a concert with half a million people, but such a almost grass root induced gathering like Woodstock certainly not. Such things are not arranged that way. They evolve in certain context. I doubt also that such a phenomena would occur in Europe or elsewhere in the world or for that matter again in USA.

On his own however Neil represents also just himself, a unique blend of a critical thinker and an empathetic poet. For us a poet is not merely someone who uses a certain specified, from pundits formally canonized techniques, but someone who gives us a glimpse of that still from quantity oriented empirical science ungraspable entity called soul . In that sense Neil is certainly a poet. But I am not writing this blog to disclose the historical significance of the music of the decade he represents nor anything about his good old gems. This blog is meant to express my amazement at Neil’s prodigy and as the title suggests his almost never rusting!

Today I stumbled after clicking through some links somehow at the website of NY Times (Neil Young Times) where I could read his blog about the rather unpleasant YouTube versus Warner episode. As I was scanning the front page of the Times (certainly no misnomer) I was amazed to notice at how many fronts Neil is not only up-to-date but actively contributing to what his happening in his world, our world, the Globe at present _ _ in here and now! It is certainly worth having an exclusive newspaper just for that!

Surprise after surprise! I thought he was gone after his sickness and operation into historical obscurity associated often with stardom. And probably living in the past or some villa with cats and dogs and friends. Not only would I discover that my thinking was completely off the mark but that Neil Young, by all means a young man is more than a savant of the newest latest high-tech technology related to multimedia and fully aware of its potential for his own needs. This meant doing something really for the first time and apparently it a was not any suggestion from any of his geeky fans that got him going. No he seemed to view it with same wide-eyed fascination that you witness on the faces of teenagers! Its Neil own project and the technology involved is, as you would expect, a means toward achieving something concrete for his project rather than as an end in itself.

Quite dedicated as always to what he does, he had embarked on a project that chronicles his music career. Apparently first drafted 15 years ago it began taking shape some two years back. However DVD would not meet the demands he had for this project. So he decided for something else, Java and Blue Ray. This would not only offer enhanced multimedia capabilities but would make it possible to update the content in future and offer the user a visually appealing navigation, where the data is visually sorted and archived in files and drawers, a dream of anyone writing an article about a certain period in the musicians career or for someone looking for some specific content. Moreover it would mean Neil could continue on the project in future, since his legacy is quite huge and probably would always need updating and he is still rocking in the less freer world today and we can certainly look forward to more of his works.

Last year (May 2008) Neil presented his project at Java One with the Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz. Dan Farber has reported on the event, the key note speech from Neil, at CNET.com Neil Young rocks JavaOne. You can watch the key note video at the CNET website. If it had not been for Neil and Jonathan Schwartz; who loves Neil’s Rocking in the free world I might have been inclined to think that perhaps this show is staged and financed by some vendors for Blue Ray gadgets or Sony Play Stations or a promotion for the Sun Java software. But it sure was the old Neil! Casual in jeans as ever and with no iron heart. And his appearance was fully convincing, it was Neil as he is! What came to the fore was no usual media cliché or show-off of geeky stuff and smudgy terminologies borrowed from information highway but a wakeful almost teenager fascination with the project he is immersed in at present besides his other occupations that keep him updated with all that is happening around his world. And obviously he is taking it all in with a thoroughly participatory attitude. And all grasped with mind and heart, the latter inducing him to be critical when required, something that made MTV once cancel a presentation of one of his CD’S. Fully updated with the events, technology and the people around him I was amazed at his abilities. This project with Blue Ray and Java is sure enough high tech multimedia, aka a video game offering a sort of “3D tumbling experience through time” according to Larry Johnson of Shakey Films who is working on the project, especially for some one who once probably considered deep grooved record as the epitome of audio technology of the times. And sure enough he is on his way to fulfill his aim to present his recorded legacy to his fans and critics and later generations with help of the right people no doubt. But he is certainly no outsider gaining a foothold nor apparently lost in the jungle of digital terminologies. This guy seems to feel at home in more than a few dimensions. And equally dedicated to environment he is also involved on project for a fossil fuel car. Some Users at CNET have proclaimed it (this project of Neil) as a sellout, especially after having heard of a certain scheduled appearance of Neil at some local WalMart. Assuming the latter case is true, I would only recommend it. Better get that money and invest it in fossil fuel, rather than just indulge myself in tirades without the means to change anything around. However there are lots of other stories that do not necessarily depict Neil in all that favorable light, especially for having given his career priority over personal relationships, his business acumen and his having indulged somewhat in inspired but amateur stuff. The moral implications of the human acts here are significantly different from the ones that Mahatma Gandhi, who was a reformer set upon himself. A Songwriter is an artist first and a reformer or a voice of times and the disenfranchised and the exploited people of the world later. One can not judge everyone with a uniform set of norms. And a little pragmatism, even opportunism and business acumen amongst the more idealistic artists ought be encouraged.

I think such a phenomenal achievements need to be mentioned, phenomenal in the sense that Neil has after all a poets soul, unfortunately so much missing in most of the Guru’s and geeks and consumers and users of our digital modern world.
The soul that crossed the oceans looking for the heart of gold, lamenting the sacking of mother earth and the fate of the native Indians and is even now no less concerned at the losses that might potentially occur to artist from some specific Labels! As a musician, song writer, film director (pseudo name Bernard Shakey), author, active founder of non-profit school and a bit contradicting but nevertheless consistently humanistic oriented protester of the political heads of the state and the political credo’s of his times, he has had a very busy life. A life moreover enriched with a social work and active participation in social, political, musical and technological transformation taking place in the world through all the past decades ranging from the old Buffalo Springfield era to our own modern times. And he is as active today as he was decade back. And all this at an age, when many of his contemporaries have retreated into shadows of times and the comfort-offering seclusions of the old age. That way Neil has kept his brain and body forever young.

Long may you live Neil!

Mushtaq Bhat

• ^* NY Times >> (Neil Young Times)
• Neil Young rocks JavaOne >>

Evolution in an universal sense (encompassing living replicating open thermodynamic systems and non living systems) also means increasing complexity in structural organizations in Time.
Time in this specific context can however be observed only as a linear phenomenon, even when it may contain within itself cyclic Time, i.e., perfectly stable thermodynamic states (or to express it in biological terms, like Ramray, as the basic moduli of biological structural organizations) and as such, so the classical theory, inevitably and remorselessly destined to a final death in an universal cosmic entropy! No big bang, like the birth of the universe or for that matter of a human child with a primal scream, but a slow fading away of everything in a warm nothingness or for that matter the silently witnessed natural death of a grand parent.

Mind you the modern physics won’t deny you the possible existence of other universes where these laws do not apply! Or the fact that quantum physics will give you the blessings of a doubt within a microcosmic universe.

The fact is we understand actually less than before, because behind the apparent complexity of the observable universe there resides still more complexity. Einstein probably thought the universe as big as a Galaxy. And Hubble did not know of the new universes imagined by modern mathematicians, physicist and cosmologists to extend well beyond our 4 (space time) dimensions in some unobserved 7 (mathematical) dimensions. And quantum and modern physics think strings and the new particles with their flavors are the basic structures of our universe, because they can not at present go deeper than that. Once another Hubble uses a new nano-telescope you may find a cosmos within a gluon!

Science is a grand story of the humans, how can it be otherwise? And similarly your question concerning the where-to of evolution is also a grand question of the humans? In a way both are philosophical and it is less a question of physics versus biology, but something more substantial but constrained by the trends, paradigms, fashions, instruments, technologies and hopes of the times!

Have you ever wondered at this one crazy thing?

Why were the brains of the Homo sapiens already endowed with an hardware that could produce an Euclid, an Einstein and a Riemann long before there was any actual need for it? They only needed 5% of that primate asset if you consider the selective pressures imposed by the times! Or were the other primates already so advanced that a capability to construct the Euclidean geometry or our religion and poetry was a prerequisite for survival?

I am absolutely not hinting at anything. I personally think it may have been an accident, in fact life itself and the universe may be an accident or the dream of a Brahma! But the most enlightened of modern physicist will probably claim that life and subsequently Intelligence is an inherent property of Matter! This is not the place to talk about our concepts of matter as such.

But we do come to this unavoidable conclusion, that intelligence in its most higher abstract form is also the ability, perhaps an unavoidable one to ask that very question that Mavani has raised. And as such represents a legitimate field of honest scientific enquiry?

Physics has no answer and will probably never have one.
Biology? Not when evolution is perceived only as a measurable change in allele frequencies within populations! This however does not preclude us from attributing intelligence and purposeful functionality to a highly organized state of ants or to a kingdom of the bees!

The answer to Mavani’s question can not lie within measurable Quantifying Sciences.
No doubt philosophers like William James, psychologists and sociologists have tried to answer such questions, especially those with an rather imperfect understanding of Darwinism in 19th Century Europe. Most of the latter have tried to explain (rather explain away!) the need for such questions through cultural relativism!

What Biology and Physics do not understand is vastly more than what they do.

Just wait 20 years more!

And the answer under the present paradigm to Mavani’s is of course: there is no teleological factor in evolution, but nevertheless the evolution has blessed us with a structure (brain) that does ask such questions, actively seek answers to such questions… and strangely feel disappointed when it does not find the answer?

I have of course my own explanation for this phenomenon. But that won’t answer Mavani’s question in the way he seeks the answer. It too can be considered as explaining it away and to be associated with the predominant paradigm of our epoch.

Willed purposeful acts associated with awareness have been recently attributed to certain species of singing birds, many members of the primates, canines, whales and what not!

Add to such purposefulness some rudimentary language, one time or another you will have word for purpose. This word initially associated with concrete physical acts (violations) meant to serve some physical bodily purposes for primary existence is transposed onto certain abstract categories. Life, Evolution, Universe…

I claim any species that does not indulge in an aware purposeful manipulation of the outside world would never ever ask a question concerning purpose of life!

The question in intimately connected with the ability to handle purposefully and to conceptualize it by means of an inherited language.

Your question is human. Nature may not be aware of it, operating as Nature does on an nonverbal plane. You may however project your purposefulness on it, and it may or may not reflect it. When it does reflect it you can consider yourself lucky! If it does not, you can just accuse the science of wallowing in a primitive stage or not possessing the rightful instruments.

Or better still, seek your own answer, based on what life teaches you everyday, with and without instruments .. and may be help develop our knowledge of the universe in more than one dimension.

 
To avoid any misunderstanding concerning the subject of our discourse related to our artwork:  Shantaram,  it is necessary to emphasize the fact that our elucidation of the Theme is not a critic of the book as such.  It is moreover not aimed at appraising the author of the book, a daunting task since the boundaries here between the author and the narrator (the main character of the book) are the most complex and quite warped and very extraordinary if not unique in the international history of fiction.^* Check Wikipedia.org for more details. Nor is it an endorsement or condemnation of the author, the books content or the way of life popularized and eulogized by media and the film and the film festival juries in the last decades, ever since John Wayne, Charlton Heston, Gregory Peck, Peter O’Toole, Richard Burton, Walter Mathieu, Jerry Lewis-Dean Martin, Olivier-Hardy and Chaplin were replaced by most of the time gun totting and in high-tech, from Dolby Laboratories reproduced bullets banging Di Nero, Stallone and Schwarzenegger, Toshiro Mifune and other predominantly in urban underground pulp fiction setting operating million dollar stars at national and international Box-Office. It deals only with that part of the narrative in which Shantaram is imprisoned in Bombay. A literary rendering of the authors confinement at Mumbai’s Central (Arthur Road) prison mixed with flashbacks from the experiences he had in prisons back home in Australia. The author Gregory David Roberts, one must admit is himself more amazing than his creations, more than his urban, rural and tribal characters, facts about him even stranger than fiction.

Not all of the deeds of Shantaram are heroic in the traditional sense of the term and often contradictory. Like Robin Hood he fights for the week and those who are exploited, going as far or even further than Vincent van Gogh in giving away his last one warm coat to those in need.  He is the only non qualified and extremely efficient one-man medical first-aid station in super power India’s slum of 25, 000 fully disenfranchised souls. At times unlike Robin Hood and more like a colossal Gilgamesh, Theseus or Hercules he acts completely alone with extraordinary faithfulness to his inner voice.  Almost like a superman and batman fighting petty gangsters and egomaniacs in the traditional pulp fiction way,  he is also trying to find a personal and social leverage within the colossal chaos and the demons of rampaging almost pathological cancerous corruption evident at all levels of society in the urban jungle of the Metropolis Mumbai.

Yet again he also smuggles drugs and weapons across nations. Weapon smuggling across countries with idealistic intentions may be acceptable in normal bourgeoisie school education, if consistent within the expressed framework of a chosen and chivalrously defended ideology but a hero smuggling drugs makes unfortunately Shantaram a profoundly controversial literary figure, and should make anyone pause, before recommending this book for public school education. We know from history that the King did forgive Robin Hood for his trespasses, which however never made us flinch nor loose our faith in our hero and which we as fans fully endorsed. But unfortunately Shantaram does make you flinch on occasions. However we do know that a drug smuggler is not a pusher. The pusher is probably more often directly confronted with the consequences of his acts. And since Shantaram himself was a drug addict, it somehow does in a way mitigate to some extent this extremely significant trespass, since it is apparently no cold blooded financial calculation that motivated such behavior. In fact the lack of empathy manifested in such act or the callousness displayed here toward a potential victim of such crimes indeed does reflect to a discerning mind the fact, that it is the same kind of disregard and from my explicitly here declared point of view, morally condemnable indifference, that Shantaram exhibits toward his own self at specific moments in his life. Gregory David Roberts is more than aware of this himself and attributes his great enlightening transformation in this case to the accounts that he read about Phoolan Devi. Nevertheless his stuff is not for the faint hearted nor for our youngsters. That said we can proceed with my appraisal of my artwork and one of its main source of inspiration: Shantaram in a Mumbai Prison _ an account of the social structure and behavioral psychology and sociology of a prison rendered in hard-chore visceral literature that ever was!

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^* Being an Indian by birth and having myself lived three years intermittently in Bombay and the fact that I as a Kashmiri once did amidst others also share the cultural values prevalent in this geo-socio-political region, stretching from the valley of Kashmir to Afghanistan, that are a inherently tribal and basically kinship oriented intermixed with a through predominantly conquest superimposed pan-Islamic universalism. I have to admit that the narrative exhibits through out a sub-cuticle authenticity. In fact I have hardly read any western author who has penetrated so deeply into shared cultural recesses of the social and psychological realm of the sub-continent India _ into the Indian Psyche as one would say in plain english.  This participatory awareness coupled with a viscerally felt sensitiveness pulsates throughout the narrative,  no less also in the depiction of the journey through the frontier provinces of Pakistan and Afghanistan. One feels, that the author must not only have suffered and gone through the ordeals but experienced the events almost as an insider would, with the same recognizable resonating chords of feeling and even perception as a native would!  Something most of the ethnologists, let alone journalists, may dream about. A perplexing authenticity that makes the borders between fiction and fact even more fuzzy!