What is a “calling?”.
Why are many seemingly happy people not vexed with this question? Are they not listening? Are they not called? Does a calling presuppose a “Caller”? And how, on earth and in heaven, did Moses do it?
Wo wo wo, timeout: this question can be a can of worms.
My consideration is not theological or theoretical, so don’t expect too much theory here. For me, the holy fool, the question of vocation is a messy, dank, all too real one concerning emotions and life choices. And, as it turns out, time and money too, but perhaps most of all, music. Pass the popcorn, pass the tissues, and make yourselves comfortable, and I will begin.
In 2004 I had the happy event of finishing my first songwriter album. I had been aware of a wanting to create original music since I was a teenager, but only got around to it 25 years later; is this what John Lennon meant by “The long and winding road”?
I was and remain satisfied with “The middle of it All“. Amongst the sea of innumerable releases of music, and despite all its limitations, it was nevertheless a life first, finally after decades of application, an album of my own I deemed worth it. Whereas most songwriters put out their work starting in their relatively carefree 20’s, I only managed to do mine in my 40’s. Stoically, I told people, “I work slowly – 1 album every 43 years”. It makes Peter Gabriel look like Prince.
I committed to the project life cycle of “TMOIA” from inception to writing to recording to mixing to mastering to manufacture to marketing and promoting, as an adventure, and learning exercise. In hindsight, however, I see the project as a failure. My conclusions in short were that you cannot be both creator and businessman. Emotionally I was drained and sunk back into a morass of disappointment.
But even in the midst of this dark valley, the Muse was at work. As an attempt to escape the anxiety of the songwriter, I started to experiment with a different sort of music. No “songs”, no words , no singing. Rather it started from a different POV – that of rhythm and pattern, as opposed to lyric and melody.
I tapped into one of my sub-traditions, electronica. I had kept this flame burning ever since hearing “Switched on Bach” performed by Wendy-Walter Carlos on the Moog in the early 70’s. Tangerine Dream, Vangelis, Kraftwerk, and prog rock maestros Rick Wakeman (Yes), Tony Banks (Genesis), Keith Emerson (ELP), the Pink Floyd, not to mention numerous electric guitar gods – Page, Hendrix, Howe, Blackmore – made up the roots of my fascination.
And then the 90’s – acid house, trip hop, big beat, darkcore, ambient … how many genres can one decade invent? Once people got over the electronic as a cost cutting exercise ( why use an orchestra when I have a mahoosive synth to emulate it?) and they started to use electronic sound on its own terms, the roof was blown off. My favourites of that decade remain Underworld, Massive Attack, and The Shamen.
So, I have been nurturing some music for the last 4 years. The music started with the shadowy maverick gnostic rhythmtist known as Gwanda Methuselah. He and I, together with a range of household and kitchenware, and my Kaoss Pad, proceeded to create some rhythmic sounds the likes of which have no known parallel. They are not electronic per se, but when combined with the very fine music creation software Ableton Live, became more so.
Back to the present: as it now stands the project is a combination of the electronic and the acoustic. In fact, in the last four years I have taken up and recorded the Valiha (Madagascan Bamboo zither), the Mandola, the Irish Bouzouki, the Bass Clarinet, the Charango (leftish, a Bolivian “super-ukulele”) and the Djembe.
And in recent months I have been able to find the energy to complete the project, may I prematurely introduce to you my second album “Pinging Gwanda“. Tracks which might be included are “Vision Quest”, “Eyrie”, “From the Empty Quarter”, “Passage of the Magi”, “Off the Grid”, and “The Deepening Dance”, just for a foretaste in words. I’ll let you know as soon as I have web versions available.
I speak of course as AVJ Twinstar; AVJ refers to the Audio and the Visual. So it gives me the freedom to present music but perform visuals as well. As you might know I have spent to last year developing my VJing skills and making and performing images. So there is a lot of variety possible with the material – it certainly won’t be a “recital”; it’s likely that I’ll be mixing moshpit images with clips suitably abstract, psychedelic and sacred.
But of course, I’ll play some of my instruments too – otherwise I might accused of selling out completely to DJ slacker culture. But its a balance of curating and performing, composing and compositing, twiddling knobs and massaging frets, creating sacred communal space and providing a unique individual point of view, that I find exciting.
And hopefully others will too. But the only way I can visualise being able to do this is by becoming very “tricky”, not letting my right hand know what my left is up to, and attempting the impossible.
This brings me back to where I began – calling. It seems that as Peter Rollins talks of “impossible forgiveness” being a “a forgiveness without conditions” that likewise calling is being summoned to the impossible, without regard to what makes sense, or on condition of any given outcome. Otherwise, to answer “the call” is, as Rollins puts it, ”nothing more than a prudent bet”.
We’ll see. Expect the unexpected … I will.
Gavin Marshall said
I watched a movie this weekend on Indian Yogis and how they move to various sacred places. At the time I wondered why there were such a thing as sacred places? What’s the point? Why are they sacred?
I realised a little later in the weekend that the sacred places are there so that we get off our butts and make the journey, that the ‘place’ isn’t sacred, but the way we grow and the things we encounter along the way.
I think this is what the call is about – the call to create and become who you are. In your case the joy of writing the music, creating something new out of nothing, exploring yourself and finding ways of expressing that.
In retrospect the end product will always be a mixture of feelings – pride but disappointment – because it was never about the end product, but who you were in the making of it. And even then, the end product is once again a challenge to keep on with the journey and push ahead exploring and creating the dream we call our lives…
Nic Paton said
Aah Gavin: An interesting perspective. It brings into focus various things:
- Place vs Space as sacred.
If you are a pantheist, then place WILL be sacred. But otherwise, it’s more about space, and people in that space, and the mood evoked. I do believe however that certain places for mysterious reasons, evoke more or less “sanctity” than others.
- The call to become who we are, vs the call to transcend ourselves.
Traditionally, theists feel called by G-d, and this involves “loosing themselves”, and gaining G-d. Jesus in Gethsemane was archetypal, as it was here that he battled with his will vs his Fathers will. But to the more eastern mind, salvation is not doing the will of G-d, but shedding all that is not our true self, the maya or illusion. I guess you tend towards this view?
I waited for years for “confirmations”, signs, and not many came. Only after considerable reflection did I come to see the writing on the walls of my history: music was in my blood. No instituion ever really grasped or blessed my vocation, rather quite the opposite.
- The product v the process
“Music is its own reward” sang Neil Finn. I struggle to relegate music to either extreme: process, or product.
As mere product, we fall into “commoditisation” where nothing has intrinsic value. As mere process, however, there is a certain meaninglessness in doing it. If there is no difference between a good product and bad, what’s the point? But I certainly value the process and its transformative power highly. I see the community created as one good measure of the success of any process.
- Life as “Dream”.
I like this – it means we take responsibility to become something, rather than allowing the institution to tell us who we must become. I like the Blake quote from your posting http://mysticdrum.blogspot.com/2008/02/finding-my-own-rhythm.html
“I must create a system or be enslaved by another man’s”.
I look forward to more exploration…
Tim Victor said
Nic,
The whole subject of “Calling” is quite challenging to comprehend while simultaneously being so hard to live out or live into. I’m amazed at how often the working out of a calling is like trying to navigate a mountain, knowing where you’re headed is not the same as appreciating being there or even the same as journeying there.
That said, I believe the journey of the creative, of the trickster, of the ‘out of box’ individual isn’t easily commodifiable and so there is the tendency to not readily be able to measure progress or arrival.
Are you still aware of a “calling”? what does your “calling” mean to you now?
Gavin Marshall said
Nic
hmm – i’d love to ellaborate sometime, but don’t really want to go off course from your original topic.
I would say that I am probably a pantheist if I have to categorize myself, and yes, my thinking does tend to be a bit on the eastern side with regard to ’salvation’. For me, ‘calling’ is all about becoming who I AM – removing the layers of illusion and that which I consider as seperate from the Universe. In that sense I would say that salvation comes from dying to self (the little self – the ego) and letting go to God – LIFE, the Source, I AM.
With regard to dreaming – well if you look at the length of a single lifetime – life is but a dream that passes in the night. The trick is to be awake in that dream and learn to fashion it and create reality – to be able to move and decide within the dream, rather than be carried along by it. This too is the call – the Heroe’s Journey.
So on the one hand you have the letting go – to life, to who we are; and on the other we have control – where we get to create and fashion our reality. Yin and Yang. Both in balance.
Row row row your boat…gently down the stream…. merrily merrily… life is but a dream
fakeexpressionsoftheunkown said
Where Everything Is Music
Don’t worry about saving these songs!
And if one of our instruments breaks,
it doesn’t matter.
We have fallen into the place
where everything is music.
The strumming and the flute notes
rise into the atmosphere,
and even if the whole world’s harp
should burn up, there will still be
hidden instruments playing.
So the candle flickers and goes out.
We have a piece of flint, and a spark.
This singing art is sea foam.
The graceful movements come from a pearl
somewhere on the ocean floor.
Poems reach up like spindrift and the edge
of driftwood along the beach, wanting!
They derive
from a slow and powerful root
that we can’t see.
Stop the words now.
Open the window in the center of your chest,
and let the spirits fly in and out.
– Jalaluddin Rumi
Nic Paton said
Tim
Calling has been and is an issue for me. I had a sense of it from teen years onwards. When I compared this with other people, I assumed having a calling was a grace and made one very fortunate. But its both blessing and burden.
One percieved benefit to having a calling was that “you at least know what it is you are here for”, but I found that fact to be very vexing indeed; I would mostly rather have NOT known. Instead of clarity of purpose it often brought great anxiety and disappointment.
Maybe the key to this lies in our assumptions and examining and developing those. If you assume that “G-d over there” will reach out and tell you what to do, you are taking a risk. If on the other hand you read your calling from your own history – “G-d within you” (or at least combine the more external and internal approach), and NOT “wait for the revelation” but just be true to who you are, its easier to find a way forward.
Also in the context of this post, which emphasises an individual artists viewpoint, if you see the call to community as central, that adds another angle to the bigger question.
What I am currently celebrating is the fact that I have a community to be part of (not matter how small or marginal) AND I have the energy to be an uncompromising Creative. I feel ready to take the risks I have been writing about.
Nic Paton said
Gavin
I’m not sure about the “row you boat” thing. What jars there is the idea of “but a dream” – it seems to trivialise life. On the other hand you can take life much to seriously, like a Russian philosopher.
My attraction to life as Dream is in Brian McLarens suggestion that the “Kingdom” of G-d (The central myth in most christian movements) is outmoded and anachronistic, and might better be represented by the “Dream of G-d”.
What I like about this is the idea that we partake in G-d’s lucid (or maybe not so lucid) dream, we co-create the cosmos, rather than slavishly await redemption and never engage our beings in the process. In this, everything we do in love and in faith and by grace, is building G-d’s dream, including the art we make.
Nic Paton said
Andrew
A lovely, lovely poem. It says that music cannot be extinguished, and exists everywhere, mythically speaking.
But while I fully endorse the sentiment, I am making a stand for music to be concrete, not figurative, for myself. So I am encouraged by the fact of musics eternal status, but at the same time it must for me be wrested from the uncreated into the present, and that is my task.
Gavin Marshall said
Nic – the idea of us partaking in (or being) God’s dream, (or the Dream of the Earth, or the Universe’s dream – this theme is quite universal) is exactly what I’m talking about.
As for ‘Row row your boat’ – yes there’s the element of ‘trivialisation’, but at the same time I think that some of the childish songs we teach our children are sometimes powerful clues to the way things are – they come from the realm of the archetypes. It’s the same as the myths and fairy tales – on the one hand they’re stories we read our kids and don’t take them seriously, and yet they’re also maps and clues for the heroe’s journey. As Joseph Campbell says “Myths are clues to the spiritual potentialities of the human life”. I like to see them as reminders of what we already know, but have forgotten.
It sometimes feels like this Archaic Intelligence has left behind this trail of bread crumbs for us to find our way back home – and that for me is what ‘the Call’ is all about. Waking up in this dream and slowly realising who we are, where we come from and what it is we’re supposed to be doing.
Don R said
Garvin- “It sometimes feels like this Archaic Intelligence has left behind this trail of bread crumbs for us to find our way back home – and that for me is what ‘the Call’ is all about. Waking up in this dream and slowly realising who we are, where we come from and what it is we’re supposed to be doing.”
So very well said. These are my feelings as well.
Don R said
Gavin- I could at least spell your name correctly. Sorry.