User/merlyn

]]] http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v663/greg777mitchell/Img0004.jpg [[[

++Hi @YOU@.++

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How did I end up with this handle ? At the time I registered I was reading the book ''[Wikipedia:Fools_Die Fools Die !]'' by Mario Puzo. Quite a good book, with a lot of fools, all of whom do indeed expire and shuffle off their mortal coils. The central character in that book is called ''John Merlyn'' and he survives, the implication being, I suppose, that he wasn't a fool.

It must have been 1 of the 24 selves that make up 'me'.

||The Skeptic||The Mystic||

||The Rationalist||The Wizard||

||The Philosopher||The Fool||

||The Genius||The Shaman||

||The Father||The Son||

||The Mathematician||The Musician||

||The Engineer||The Chef||

||The Student||The Dreamer||

||The Lover||The Healer||

||The Anarchist||The Discordian||

||The Brother||The Friend||

||The Angel||The Demon||

== * Philosophy ==

++ It's All Entirely Pointless ++

Take eating. The only point in that is to eat again later. Eating has no point outside of itself. There are certain activities that ''everyone'' seems to assume have some point, like improving the lot of humanity. I'm afraid that's pointless, too. All one does when "improving the lot of humanity" is to project one's own prejudices onto a group seen as less fortunate than oneself. Who's to say that your own prejudices actually improve the quality of life of the target group ? This is evident in America exporting the American way of life. Prejudices lead people to think that ''their way'' is better, and anyone who can't partake of ''their way'' is a poor unfortunate. Actually Capitalism decreases quality of life in many cases, meaning people have to work more than is good for them.

Chasing after power, fame, money, material possesions, attractiveness or social status are too also pointless. (You probably figured that out.)

However (and it's a big however) there is a positive side to the pointlessness of human activity. If all the stuff that received wisdom suggests not only has a point, but is crucially important, is, in fact, pointless, then do what you like, and don't take crap from anyone.

++ It's All Meant To Be ++

(i.e. the complete antithesis of the philosophy outlined above).

Far out synchronicities sometimes scream that there is a cosmic plan, and everything has a point, a piece in a very large jigsaw puzzle, or a jewel in Indra's Net.

''it happened for a ''reason, ''it happened for'' no reason, ''it happened for a ''reason, ''there was no'' reason ''why that happened, there must have been some'' reason ''for it, that happened for'' no reason ...

== * Music ==

I've been playing music for over 20 years, and I'm the last person who could tell you what music 'is'. It's kind of like defining creativity. One defintion of creativity is :

*Creativity is what creative people do.

Although it is a circular defintion, it appeals to me because it is so open ended, and really because of the nature of creativity, seems a satisfactory definition to me. Using a similiar logic I could define music thus :

*Music is what musicians do.

This then leads to considering that peculiar breed : the musician, and I have met many, many musicians over the years. Some of them actually think about what music 'is' and often they would define it as

*---Music is a sound that is pleasing to the ear.---

I've heard that definition and others like it from musicians who think that The Beatles represent the musical high-water mark of all history.

=== * What's wrong with the music industry ===

First of all the title. Music isn't a product like tins of beans. Music isn't an industry. But I think it can be said that musicians were able to communicate with an audience ''via'' recorded media or live concerts more effectively in the past. I see 'the music industry' so-called going worng around 1973, the year of Dark Side Of The Moon, of Led Zeppelin at the peak of their popularity, the year Yes released their ''triple'' live album Yesssongs and of ... the Oil Crisis. After the Oil Crisis even a bar of soap cost 50p, and a triple album became an unthinkable excess.

Previous to this there were some good albums released that were about music and communicating ideas, rather than ''making money''. The music industry itself didn't realise it had been irrevocably wrecked by the price of black sludge that comes out the ground, and managed to carry on in a delusional state of denial, occasionally producing a good album or two despite itself.

The 80s ... do I have to say any more ?

The 90s saw anomie as the fashionable current, as purveyed by say, Nirvana and also the rise of music technology. Also some utterly cynical marketing efforts like boy-bands (Westlife, Boyzone, Take That ...) and girl-bands (Spice Girls, Girls Aloud, Sugababes ... ) The industry had woken up from the delusion and now knew it was in business, which involves making money not music.

Today the music industry seems to me a complete joke. A travesty. Glorified karaoke. And this ties in with musicians who think that The Beatles made the best music of all time. Today it seems to me that people think that music is good if it sounds like something else. As an example take the X-Factor. Really, that is simply karaoke. There is no emphasis on the creative ability of the contestants -- they don't perform thier own songs. A performer is considered good if they can sound like someone else, preferably someone else who sold a lot of records and made record executives rich. The industry is reluctant, unwilling rather, to take a chance on anything original.

On the positive side today musicians can bypass the whole awful industry and use the internet to connect with an audience.

== * Books ==

Books I've read :

Robert Anton Wilson -- Illuminati Papers, Illuminatus!, *Cosmic Trigger vols I, II, & III, *Prometheus Rising, Quantum Psychology,,

Timothy Leary -- Design for Dying, Exopsychology,,

Alan Watts -- Way of Zen,,

Jay Stevens -- Storming Heaven,,

Carl Jung -- Psychological Reflections,,

R.L. Gregory -- Eye and Brain,,

R.D. Laing -- The Divided Self,,

Thomas A. Harris -- I'm OK, You're OK,,

Eric Berne -- Games People Play, What Do You Say After You Say Hello ?,,

Desmond Morris -- Bodywatching, The Human Zoo,,

Jonathan Miller -- Modern Masters : <no>McLuhan</no>,,

George Lakoff and Mark Johnson -- Metaphors We Live By,,

Plato -- The Republic,,

William Blake -- The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,,

Descartes -- Meditations of First Philosophy,,

Arthur Kenyon Rogers -- A Student's History of Philosophy,,

Yamamoto Tsunemoto -- Hagakure,,

Miyamoto Musashi -- A Book of Five Rings,,

Aleister Crowley -- *Magick, 777, Book of Thoth,,

Chrisopher Hyatt -- Taboo,,

William G. Gray -- Qabalistic Concepts,,

Eliphas Levi -- Transcendental Magic,,

Diana Fernando -- The Dictionary of Alchemy,,

E.E. Rehmus -- The Magician's Dictionary,,

Marian Green -- The Elements of Natural Magic,,

Murry Hope -- Celtic Magic,,

Alice Bailey -- Seven Rays and Initiations,,

P.D. Ouspensky -- A New Model of The Universe,,

G.I. Gurdjieff -- Views from the Real World,,

J. Krishnamurti -- Journal, The Awakening of Intelligence, On Fear,,

J. Krishnamurti and David Bohm -- The Ending of Time,,

Joseph Campbell -- *The Masks of God II : Occidental Mythology, *The Masks of God IV : Creative Mythology,,

Fritjof Capra -- The Tao of Physics,,

Piers Paul Read -- The Templars,,

Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas -- The Hiram Key,,

James Redfield -- The Celestine Prophecy,,

Paul Hawken -- The Magic of Findhorn,,

Lyall Watson -- Supernature,,

Shakti Gawain -- Creative Visualisation,,

J. Maya Pikington -- Mind Over Matter,,

Daniel Goleman -- Emotional Intelligence,,

James Gleick -- Faster, Genius, Chaos,,

Stephen Wolfram -- A New Kind of Science,,

Steven Levy -- Artificial Life,,

Roger Lewin -- Complexity,,

Rudy Rucker -- The Fourth Dimension,,

Robert Gilmore -- Alice in Quantum Land,,

Richard Feynman -- Q.E.D.,,

Brian Greene -- The Elegant Universe,,

John Barrow -- Impossibility, The Book of Nothing,,

James Lovelock -- The Ages of Gaia,,

John Gribbin -- The Hole in the Sky,,

John Gribbin and Mary Gribbin -- Being Human,,

John Gribbin and Martin Rees -- Cosmic Coincidences,,

David Wells -- The Penguin Dictionary of Curious and Interesting Numbers,,

David Blatner -- The Joy of Pi,,

Nick Cook -- The Hunt for Zero Point,,

E.F. Schumacher -- Small is Beautiful,,

Niall Ferguson -- The Cash Nexus,,

Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner -- Freakonomics,,

Richard Dawkins -- The Ancestor's Tale,,

Douglas Hofstader -- *Godel, Escher, Bach,,

Hunter S. Thompson -- Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The Proud Highway,,

Iain Banks -- The Wasp Factory, The Bridge,,

Alisdair Gray -- Poor Things,,

Lewis Grassic Gibbon -- Sunset Song,,

Charles Dickens -- A Tale of Two Cities,,

Will Self -- *Great Apes, The Quantity Theory of Insanity, Grey Area,,

H.P. Lovecraft -- At the Mountains of Madness, Dagon and Other Tales,,

Robert Pirsig -- Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,,

Kurt Vonnegut -- Slaughterhouse Five, Bagombo Snuff Box,,

J.D. Salinger -- The Catcher In The Rye,,

Jack Kerouac -- On The Road, Vanity of Dulouz, Desolation Angels,,

William Gibson -- Neuromancer, Count Zero ''(rubbish, I thought)'',,

Phillip K Dick -- Valis, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep ?, The Zap Gun, The Penultimate Truth,,

K.W. Jeter -- Dr. Adder,,

L. Ron Hubbard -- Battlefield Earth ''(the worst book I've ever read)'',,

Douglas Adams -- Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (all),,

Frank Herbert -- Dune, Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, Hellstrom's Hive,,

Robert A. Heinlein -- Stranger In A Strange Land,,

Stanislav Lem -- A Perfect Vacuum, The Futurological Congress, Solaris,,

Victor Pelevin -- The Life of Insects,,

Harry Harrison -- The Stainless Steel Rat (all), Captive Universe, Bill the Galactic Hero, Two Tales and Eight Tomorrows,,

Philip Jose FArmer -- Riverworld (all),,

Isaac Asimov -- Foundation (all),,

Akutagawa Ryunosuke -- Rashomon,,

Aldous Huxley -- Brave New World, Doors of Perception, Heaven and Hell,,

Mario Puzo -- Fools Die!, The Godfather,,

James Clavell -- Shogun, King Rat,,

George Orwell -- 1984, Animal Farm,,

Henri Charrière -- Papillon, Banco,,

Joseph Heller -- Catch 22,,

Ian Pears -- An Instance of the Fingerpost,,

Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchet -- Good Omens,,

=== Music Books ===

Frank Zappa and Peter Occhiogrosso -- The Real Frank Zappa Book,,

Neil Slaven -- Electric Don Quixote,,

Rolling Stone History of Rock Music,,

Beatles Biography,,

Rolling Stones Biography,,

Blondie Biography,,

Elvis Costello Biography,,

Hendrix Biographies (a few),,

Peter van der Merwe -- Origins of the Popular Style,,

Joseph Kerman -- Listen, The Beethoven Quartets,,

Richard Taruskin -- The Oxford History of Western Music,,

A.H. Benade -- Fundamentals of Musical Acoustics,,

Alexander Wood -- The Physics of Music,,

R.J. Stewart -- Music and the Elemental Psyche,,

Looking at that list there really is not a lot of sense in it. Out of all of them I have actually bought only a handful. The rest I've come across, borrowed, got out the library, or been given as presents. A lot of people compile lists of 'must read' books. I wouldn't say there are any books there you 'must read'. Everyone would seem to wind their own unique path through the Gutenberg Galaxy. I've marked with a star the books that have had the most effect on me.

== * My Clan Tartan ==

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v663/greg777mitchell/tartan.gif

The idea of Tartan being a badge of Clan identity is a myth, dating from the 19th century, started by The Highland Society of London, after some sentimental re-examining of Scotland and the Highland way of life sparked by ''Ossian''.

== * Drinking with The Devil ==

]]] http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v663/greg777mitchell/photos/DCP05141.jpg [[[

]]] http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v663/greg777mitchell/photos/DCP05153.jpg [[[

[Wiki:Alcohol Alcohol] probably isn't very good for a person.

== * See Also ==

*[Deoxy:forum/pad.pl?Cat=&u=merlyn Occult Brain Dump]

*[Wiki:History/Magic History/Magic]

*[[Qabalah]]

*[Wiki:PraxisEvents/Qabalah PraxisEvents/Qabalah]

*[Wiki:History/Philosophy History/Philosophy]

*[Wiki:History/Music History/Music]

*[Wiki:History/Chronological_Table History/Chronological Table]