From: owner-jangle-poets-digest@smoe.org (jangle-poets-digest) To: jangle-poets-digest@smoe.org Subject: jangle-poets-digest V7 #3 Reply-To: jangle-poets@smoe.org Sender: owner-jangle-poets-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-jangle-poets-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk jangle-poets-digest Monday, January 24 2005 Volume 07 : Number 003 Today's Subjects: ----------------- [JP] Random Thoughts [Nieldsforever@aol.com] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 23 Jan 2005 01:13:23 EST From: Nieldsforever@aol.com Subject: [JP] Random Thoughts Sitting at home amidst the Northeast Blizzard of 1/22/05, the day of the postponed Nerissa Nields House Concert in Wakefield MA. Thinking to myself, "Why the hell NOT post something to the Kennedys List?" :-) 1. Major "Thumbs Up" about Kennedys Information Dissemination (KID) -- Pete and Maura have really set the standard for concise, informative, and thoughtful Monthly E-Newsletters. TK had a concise, informative, and thoughtful online newsletter for their fans "going on" ("What's Going On") YEARS before TN ever did. Now TN promulgate an online newsletter too, in apparent imitation of the spectacular online success of TK. Methinks TN copied TK, wanting to be "like them" in that way too. :-) 2. Major "Thumbs Down" about Kennedys Information Dissemination (KID) -- Not enough damn fan *reviews* of Kennedys shows from "out there," on the Jangle-Poets. I guess posting online Kennedys reviews just isn't all that many people's "cup of tea." (sigh) :-( 3. KID -- Be it thumbs up, or thumbs down, "I'm all thumbs." ;-) 4. I've thought a lot about the message of tolerance expressed in the song "Stand." "Allah, Buddha, Yahweh, Jesus, Brahma, People get ready, there's a train that's coming, Many different legends, just one story, All aboard the train that's bound for glory." Reading Vilfredo Pareto's "Mind and Society," where the author coined the terms: RESIDUES to mean "nonlogical determinants of behavior" ... and ... DERIVATIONS to mean "rationalizing explanations of behavior." RESIDUES influence behavior and are ultimately inexplicable, a matter of "faith" alone. DERIVATIONS are the formulations of different belief systems relating to the underlying faith that ultimately motivates behavior. "Allah, Buddha, Yahweh, Jesus, Brahma" = examples of DERIVATIONS of belief. "Many different legends" = DERIVATIONS, differently formulated explanations. "Just one story" = some imputed primal unity underlying the DERIVATIONS, presumably a formulation or a DERIVATION in its own right pointing to RESIDUES that actually influence behavior. The RESIDUES defy conceptualization, and can only be expressed symbolically. DERIVATIONS are the "smoking gun" of the RESIDUES ... even as symbolic expressions are the "smoking gun" of the archetypes in the Jungian analytical psychology. So the DERIVATIONS are analogous to "symbolic expressions," and the RESIDUES are analogous to the "archetypes." As far as I know the comparison between Pareto's theory of RESIDUES and the Jungian theory of "archetypes" has never been made before. Interestingly enough, both Jung and Pareto have Swiss connections. They both lived for some time in Switzerland, although Pareto was born in 1848 and Jung in 1875. It seems inevitable and logical enough to impute some kind of primal unity underlying the "masks" of the different belief systems, one way or another. I tend to do it myself. RESIDUES underlying DERIVATIONS. But the Kennedys in the song "Stand" have been able to express this way more beautifully, less "philosophically," more poetically, than I have -- and in a concise, informative, and thoughtful manner, at that. :-) 5. "All aboard the train that's bound for glory." -- Longtime Kennedys fan and friend Larry Jennings, on Christmas Day, boarded that train that's bound for glory. Dave Carter's wonderful first verse of the song "The Mountain" -- "I was born in a fork-tongued story, Raised up by merchants and drugstore liars, Now I walk on the paths of glory, One foot in ice, one in fire." "Now I walk on the paths of glory" -- "The Mountain" "All aboard the train that's bound for glory" -- "Stand" Yet another Dave Carter - Kennedys affinity, along with all of the others. TN have another song with "glory" in it too -- "The Day I Let Glory Steer." 6. "One foot in ice, one in fire" -- the Jungian - mystical "coniunctio oppositorum," the "coincidence of opposites." Jung got the term from the alchemists, and the idea is present in the mysticism of the Western (Christian) mystics Ruysbroeck, Eckhart, Nicholas of Cusa, and Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. Here in Northeast Blizzard Land I have "one foot in ice" alright -- feeling cold and alone like David and Nerissa Nields' jointly conceived brainchild "Snowman." Sarah McLachlan sings, "Into the Fire, I'm reunited, Into the Fire, I am the spark..." Even with "one foot in ice," I can hope to be reunited with my friend Larry someday, like "sparks to the fire." In fact, I expect to be reunited with him when the time comes for me, "When I Go." 7. TN have a very "Christian" "spin" on this reuniting with loved ones in their song "Keys to the Kingdom," which I've always mentally linked with the Nields-influencing HaHaHa-performed song "Orphan Girl" with its verse, "And when he calls me I will be able To meet my family At God's table, I'll meet my mother, My father, my sister, my brother, No more an Orphan Girl." In the spirit of the song "Raindrop," where do the Buddhists go to meet "their mother, their father, their sister, their brother"... when the call comes, "All aboard the train that's bound for glory"? 8. William Blake pictured all of Eternity as contained as it were in the "Mind of God," where nothing of value and no one is ever forgotten. Every moment and everyone is equally and eternally "present" in the ever-present Presence of Eternity. I will remember my friend Larry in this way to the best of my ability, out of love, honor, and gratitude -- and for my part I hope that God will remember Larry in this way too, only supremely so, compared to my own more halting and fleeting capacity for memory. Memory, at least, can be one way of our joining with our loved ones in a "Common Bond." In Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings," Aragorn's dying words to Arwen are a prophecy, "Behold! we are not bound forever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory. Farewell!" Bruce Check out the Kennedys' Official Home Page: http://www.KennedysMusic.com/ Fab photos, the Official tour diary, dashboard Buddha haiku, groovy merchandise...what more could you ask for? ------------------------------ End of jangle-poets-digest V7 #3 ********************************