Third outtake and third part of the Hillingdon Mind interview
Written on December 9, 2008 in Sneak previews & with 10 responses
Tags: ah yom, chris phillips, exclusives, Hillingdon Mind, interview, lyrics, mind, music, outtake, philosophy, poetry, thoughts
Again and again, thanks to Chris Phillips, here is a teaser to the third part of the hillingdonmind.org.uk interview with John done in October. The third part of the interview is up on the following page, together with handwritten lyrics of Ah Yom, the second bonus track which will be released on the Japanese version of The Empyrean. Tilt your heads, zoom as much as you can...and you will see one of the lines that was inscribed into the Curtains vinyl: A million ways things could be [Update: here it is, transcribed]
Below the teaser, you will find an outtake from the interview given exclusively to Invisible Movement, directly continuing onto the third part of the interview.
"In your daily life, if you have a thought that's motivated through insecurity or fear, (or in a lot of cases garbage that your brain is manufacturing, that you find yourself caught up in)- it's the nature of our minds that once a thought arises, for that thought to become another and another, with our days going by with these trains of thought. These trains end up being interrupted by something circumstantial: You run into a person and start a new conversation and the thoughts go away for a second, or you sit in-front of a tv screen and that blocks the thoughts out. But, in your daily life you're usually consumed by these thoughts when there's no distractions. A lot of the time you're worried about whether this or that is gonna happen, or is this person mad at me, or am I not handsome enough, or am I not sexy enough or whatever it is. These kind of thoughts end up producing these really vast trains our brains are inescapable from, because the whole thing is being led by the emotions. The thoughts and emotions are tied to one another.
With meditation a lot of people have this misconception that the purpose is not to think anything, but to me the most valuable part of it is to establish a type of detachment from your thoughts, in which your emotions and thoughts are cut off from one another. The purpose when you're sitting down with a technique like Vipassana is to observe your thoughts and to not get involved in them. Let them move by like they're a cloud."
After discussing meditation with John, Chris Phillips asked if the title Inside of Emptiness had any relation to meditation, in the sense of emptiness being a positive thing. And the below was John's response.
"I had never meditated yet at that time. I had read about it in Aleister Crowley books and I had friends that did it. I'm sure it does have a relationship to the meaning that you're talking about. In my lyrics and everything I was doing with words at that time, and pretty much since I started writing the lyrics of the stuff on my first solo album; I was really thinking in terms of trying to play games with words, to find words where the meanings had some sort of conflict with one another but that conflict found some sort of harmony in the context of lyrics or titles. It's that same reconciliation of differences that I was saying takes place with the numbers that music can be analysed by. It's the same thing with lyrics- you could have nothing but contradictory statements in the lyrics of the song and because they're in the musical context, because they have the poetic relationship to one another (the rhyming relationship and the metric relationship to one another), they seem to convey one idea even though they're two contradictory ideas. I was always trying to explore that and try to find things like that. And so the 'Inside of Emptiness' was an idea that sounded good in my brain because of its contradictory nature. It's not contradictory if you open yourself up to the idea even though to imagine the inside of emptiness is something that our brains can't really realise. That's why the words sound good to me- they sort of open up an idea in me. Trying to grasp the ungraspable. Thats what I was looking for in my lyrics. It's only been in the last 2 years that I've introduced a new challenge to myself within the lyric writing department beyond that, because I have other things I want to convey and had to do with reading a lot about those specific things, and so my lyrics are still doing the same thing and also doing something different, but I can't really talk about it."
If you liked this, check out the whole series:
Outtake 1
Interview teaser 1
Interview teaser 2
Outtake 2
10 Reactions to Third outtake and third part of the Hillingdon Mind interview
Pravila za komentarisanje:
There are also handwritten lyrics of Today... or were they there before and I didn't see them...
wow! that man is so smart! i saw the lyrics of ah yom and they are very good although i thought the lyrics will be in hebrew ( just a fantasy of mine). but they are great anyway. can you put a transcrib of the lyrics iva?
Kudos and respect to the interviewer for doing this, but what John said is horrible. I'm, of course, refering to the part of the interview about people with problems leading exciting lives. That's inconsinderate, rude, offensive and...I simply have no words. Would he like to go to Somalia and lead an exciting life and see how it is, for example?
It is obvious that he's never worked to make a living in his life. Some "troubles" cannot be dealt with that easily. Some troubles are far beyond people thinking if we're sexy or not. How on Earth can he be that shallow?
I seriously doubt he's aware of the world around him anymore if he dares to spill out offensive things like this and blame people for things they might not even be able to avoid. Either that or he's becoming an emotionless meditating robot. How sad, knowing that he used to be a human feeling such intense emotions. Is that how we help others: isolate ourselves from them so WE wouldn't be emotionally disturbed by them, while they might be in horrible pain, rotting, struggling...?
I think you misunderstood. When he refers to troubles, he's talking about 'manufactured' drama. A lot of times we get completely absorbed in useless thoughts that multiply and make us miserable. I don't think he was referring to the serious things that make the world a sad place but to the little trivia things that make our private little worlds uncomfortable.
by exciting he meant eventful
I feel you've completely misunderstood what John was saying. Having thoughts like 'Am I not handsome enough' strems from fear based insecurities not shallowness. It shows great honesty and awareness to speak of this- as it can be taken the wrong way by people with little understanding or awareness of fear-based thought processes.
As far as your piece about Somalia. Again, your misunderstanding has meant that you missed that John was talking about self-induced dramas or problems to create excitement, not unavoidable circumstantial suffering such as that you spoke of.
This is not meant to be offensive, but I think that you completely missed John's point. I think the same way on this topic as John does:
People create whole dramas in their little minds and don't even recognize that they are ruled by these habit patterns. With meditation you begin to see how this process works.
I think it's funny that you use the term "meditating robot", because that is an contradiction in itself. With meditation you get much more sensitive and you begin to develop such wonderful qualities like compassion and generosity.
Guys and girls, please continue playing fair.
I disagree with both sides in this debate, but I just have no strength to express my views, and I doubt anyone would care, or that my views matter...
This in response to Dee’s comments.
Well, it’s good that someone had a strong response against what John said, in the sense that I think meditation can have a negative connotation if it is seen as an exercise to dissociate from life.
I agree that someone in Somalia who has been raped and seen their family murdered would not think of doing meditation. I don’t think anyone can argue with the fact that sometimes, external events are beyond one’s control.
However, I think the point of meditation is the help relieve the mental anguish and anxieties involved with having a traumatic experience. The whole train of thought of anger and guilt and all that is really strong, and meditation could help a person deal with all the additional emotions that are really draining and harmful for a person. In that sense it could be helpful, and I see the talk about meditation in that way.
I think we don't have to discuss the sense of meditation at this point.
What's important is, that John only had good intentions when giving the interview (help those who have mental problems), didn't mean to insult anybody and is at least as sensitive as before.
Note: the comment written by "Giz Moe" was acutally written by me