Brothers in mind.
David Bowie the dysfunctional creative artist looking into his mind through music.
David Bowie did say that to be creative you need to have a dysfunctional mind. But Bowie is a rare example of what a true artist is – one who explorers his mind while he makes his art. One who uses the process to find the Truth. He was not satisfied with owning the “thing” and then running with it forever. Bowie kept looking for himself and for us by being the process himself. Music was just a tool to him so he could have a dialogue with himself.
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This is of the man who has seen the limitations of his mind and not too long ago too, to realise, for us now and today 2016, we can only do what is in our past. We take from our experiences and make it our own. All this are not giant leaps that bring transformations but rather shows us our short comings. The mind creates music, like the architect creates the city you live in. The mind is manifesting itself all the time. Me, me put me out there. Make me a city, like me. Make me some art, like me. The mind with its contents can only do itself. It just cannot look for the “new” as it does not know how to do it. It has its limits. It is good at regurgitating its past experiences in different combinations but it does not know how to create a giant leap. The human population is a standard deviation of David Bowie’s at both ends with the rest of non creative nothings. The specials showing us what it is like and the rest looking for their rights but accepting what is given to them. Because the Truth comes out of nothing. It comes out of no thinking. It comes out of where your past is not.
“Bowie was reading Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and Georges I. Gurdjieff……..”
Of his times,
Sci–fi writers like Kurt Vonnegut and Robert A. Heinlein’s Crowley–influenced novel “Stranger in a Strange Land” (1961) were read alongside G.I. Gurdjieff or Madame Blavatsky, the co–founder of Theosophy, an organisation establishing Yoga and other eastern imports in the mind of the hungry searcher. Writings by Carlos Castaneda, Jiddu Krishnamurti and Rudolf Steiner graced the bedside tables of many; C.G. Jung, Henry Miller, D.T. Suzuki, “The Tibetan Book of the Dead”, the “I Ching”, Crowley’s “Confessions” (edited by Crowley’s colleagues John Symonds and Kenneth Grant in 1969) and Crowley’s secretary, Israel Regardie’s “Eye in the Triangle” (1970) accompanied the walk into the Age of Aquarius.
http://www.parareligion.ch/bowie.htm
So by 1998 it is not surprising that he said:
Being an artist in any way is a kind of a social dysfunction. It is an extra ordinary thing to want to do a express yourself in such raified terms. I think it is a loony kind of thing to want to do. I think the saner and rational life is to survive steadfastly and create a protective home and create a warm loving environment for our family and get food for them. Thats about it. Anything else is extra. Culture is extra. Culture is, you know, I guess is a freeby. Something we don’t need. We only need to eat. We don’t need a particular colour plate or a particular height chair or anything but we insists on making 1000 different kinds or chairs, 15 different types of plates. (from video above)
Basically we don’t need ideas in our head. We don’t need thinking. We only need non judgemental observation and stillness in mind.
It is perhaps after chasing the Truth and seeing the same kaleidoscope of things coming through in different combinations and looking new, but not. If music was just a business for Bowie he would not have said these things. If he had known Madam Blavatsky of the theosophical society or Jiddu Krishnamurti of the Order of the Star in the East, then
The goal of the order of the star was to educate and prepare the world for the arrival of the World Teacher and to remove any material obstacles and difficulties from his path. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_the_Star_in_the_East
We don’t need religion. We don’t need culture. We don’t need ideas. We don’t need to be blinded by driving ourselves into a corner with action on ideas and if we do we need to know how to return to the center.
Word, with that book embossed with the blackstar.
No, that’s the third character! The priest guy. If you look upon all the characters he’s created over time, and there’s quite a few, some of them have names, some of them don’t. Some of them only exist in the lyrics in songs.Some of them went on tour.
Exactly! But they’re all characters, and they all mean something. And it’s all true.http://noisey.vice.com/en_uk/blog/david-bowie-blackstar-video-johan-renck-director-interview (nov 19 2015).
Of his knighthood: he turned it down.
“I would never have any intention of accepting anything like that. It’s not what I spent my life working for.”
He worked for himself first but also shared it with all of us, so we will know that:
“Truth is a pathless land” Jiddu Krishnamurti
and when you come to it:
Truth is not something far away
We do not have to seek truth. Truth is not something far away. It is the truth of the mind, truth of its activities from moment to moment. If we are aware of this moment-to-moment truth, of this whole process of time, this awareness releases consciousness or that energy to be. As long as the mind uses consciousness as the self-activity, time comes into being with all its miseries, with all its conflicts, with all its mischiefs, its purposive deceptions; and it is only when the mind, understanding this total process, ceases, that love will be. You may call it love or give it some other names; what name you give is of no consequence.
The Collected Works, Vol. VI”,323,Choiceless Awareness
David Bowie must have understood this at his end. He certainly did in his interview in 1998 but having started the process he continued to put it out to the end.
As long as the mind uses consciousness as the self-activity, time comes into being with all its miseries, with all its conflicts, with all its mischiefs, its purposive deceptions;….. J. Krishnamurti
Bowie had pointed out the pain of making art and music. Ironically the Truth cannot come to you through learning. You have to drive yourself through the process and experience the frustration of not being able to get past the limits of the mindbody and soul by doing, to know the Truth of your mind and its limits.
Could Buddha have been an artist after attaining enlightenment. He would have been all knowing and having no conflict in his mind or confusion. He would have ceased being a dysfunctional being – Art would have been a futile exercise for him? or not. Can you make art without conflict in your mind?
So what was Krishnamurthi’s and David Bowie’s secret.
“..I don’t mind what happens”
“Krishnamurti suddenly paused, leaned forward and said, almost conspiratorially, ‘Do you want to know what my secret is?’ ” (There are several accounts of this event; details vary.) Krishnamurti rarely spoke in such personal terms, and the audience was electrified, Dreaver recalls. “Almost as though we were one body we sat up… I could see people all around me lean forward, their ears straining and their mouths slowly opening in hushed anticipation.” Then Krishnamurti, “in a soft, almost shy voice”, said: “You see, I don’t mind what happens.”
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/aug/10/stop-minding-psychology-oliver-burkemanBowie’s secret, he continued to make art without fear of failure. His Knighthood? For what?
“It’s not what I spent my life working for.”
I did it for myself first. I put it out there because there might be something for you in it.
But did David Bowie find it all or nothing at all – only he will know. Because it was him who rode the creative wave and not you.