I found very little posted on FFL yesterday worth replying to or getting involved with, and wondered why until I saw this video, passed along by Marek.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qybUFnY7Y8w What I'd recommend -- as an experiment in conscious- ness and how it can be influenced by association -- is to first open the link in another tab of your browser and let it play, but immediately switch back to this or another tab and DON'T watch it. Just listen to the song *as* a song, as music, without the visuals. Anything memorable about it? Do you hear *anything* in the song that would make you ever want to listen to it a second time? YMMV, but I did not. Now watch the video. Feel differently? IMO, this video presents a good case for why video destroyed the music scene. It's no longer *about* the music; it's about the gimmicky visuals you can put onscreen to *associate* with the music to *distract* viewers from the fact that it's crappy music. It's about trying to form associations in the listeners' minds with the visuals, such that they no longer notice that they're listening to crappy music. Now let's look at one of the the conversations that reincarnated itself on FFL yesterday, as it has so many times before. More endless debates about whether the Beatles ragged on Maharishi or not after Rishikesh, as if what the Beatles said or didn't say with regard to Maharishi has *anything whatsoever* to do with the people debating it, or their own importance on the planet. Clearly, some of these people think it *does*, and that if "famous people" either practice or practiced TM or thought well of Maharishi that *says something* -- about him, about TM, and about *them* as "fellow practitioners" of TM and thus somehow "associated" with the famous people. Harkening back to my own youth on the periphery of the music scene, I see this as a groupie phenomenon. "If I stand next to the singer or the lead guitarist some of his charisma will 'rub off' on me and make me more important." Yeah, right. Does history remember a single groupie? Other than Cynthia Plastercaster, that is? :-) 42 years later, and TMers are still trying to warm their hands at *someone else's fire* instead of gener- ating their own heat. A 42-year-old Beatles song comes on the radio and for a moment they feel more self- important, as if that song makes *them* more important because they are interested in something that these four musicians were interested in for a short time in their youth. The groupie "association with greatness is almost as good as being great myself" mindset is IMO a Rube Goldberg machine constructed to *distract* from the fact that in many cases the groupie hasn't ever done anything memorable themselves. I'm more impressed that Curtis manages to support himself by making music -- and good music, at that...music that doesn't need any flash to sell it -- than I am by long-term TMers still trying to puff up their image by associating it with the image of famous people. But really, who can blame them? They are doing what their teacher did. One can make a strong case that the only reason TM ever became popular and that Maha- rishi ever became famous was because he did the same thing. He tied his somewhat feeble "charisma quotient" to the far greater charisma quotient of the Beatles and Donovan and the Beach Boys and others. He continued to do the same thing throughout his entire career, up to his dying days, trying to use David Lynch's fame to do CPR on a technique that hadn't been able to sell itself for years. Every so often I just wish that musicians would do a "music video" that was just a blank screen containing the words "Listen and decide for yourself." Or just show a clip of them performing the song -- no flash, no babes shaking their tits, no Rube Goldberg distraction machines...just the music. Every so often I wish that those trying to sell a meditation technique as useful or beneficial would do so by saying, "Here...try it. For free, or for cheap. If you like it, tell others. If not, that's OK." No flash, no Heather Graham shaking her tits, no attempt to leech off someone else's fame to generate buzz for a technique that *should* theoretically be able to generate its own if it's as cool as the people selling it claim it is. Heather Graham's tits -- as dazzling as they are -- are not going to make any female TMer's tits more attractive because Heather does TM. Paul McCartney's sagging man- boobs are not going to make any male TMer's pecs more beach-worthy. And no famous person who does TM is going to make either TM or anyone who practices TM more *anything*.
