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Echo in the Canyon
This fascinating documentary directed by Andrew Slater and hosted by Jakob Dylan provides an overview of a magic moment in music history when singers, songwriters, and musicians made the transition from folk to rock. This took place from 1964 through 1968 in Laurel Canyon in the Hollywood Hills; the music became known as the "California Sound."
A remarkable creative community lived in Laurel Canyon, stopped by each other's homes to make music together, and shared musical innovations. One of them calls what happened "cross-pollination." David Crosby of The Byrds identifies what was different about the music coming out of Laurel Canyon: As folk musicians embraced the rock, they managed to get real poetry on the radio. "Mr. Tambourine Man" by the Byrds is one example
In the documentary, we hear from members of those bands: Buffalo Springfield, The Byrds, The Beach Boys, and the Mamas and the Papas, including David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Roger McGuinn, Graham Nash, Brian Wilson, and Michelle Phillips.
They reminiscence about staying up all night jamming, or the time when the Beatles showed up at the door. They pay tribute to each other's work, singling out The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds as being a turning point. Other musicians, including Laurel Canyon resident Jackson Browne and British rockers Eric Clapton and Ringo Starr, add more perspective on a remarkable place and time.
These interviews are mixed with scenes of contemporary musicians, led by Jakob Dylan, preparing for and performing in a 2015 tribute concert to the Laurel Canyon sound. Especially fine covers are offered by Regina Spektor and Nora Jones.
Echo in the Canyon is dedicated to Tom Petty who died in 2017 and made his last appearance in this film.
The story of a Los Angeles neighborhood that produced some of the best music of the 1960s.
Mindsharing
"What motivates people to Mindshare?
"Evolutionary biology shows that our brains are wired for connection, and that social connection is as fundamental to our survival as food and shelter. Matthew Lieberman, director of UCLA's Social Cognitive Neuroscience Lab and author of Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect, says that 'just as there are multiple social networks on the Internet such as Facebook and Twitter, each with its own strengths, there are also multiple social networks in our brains, sets of brain regions that work together to promote our social well-being.' These networks include the ability to bond with others, the ability to interpret the feelings of others, and the ability to be a harmonious part of a group. Our brains have developed these abilities in order to ensure our survival, and Lieberman says these 'social adaptations are central to making us the most successful species on earth.' Perhaps, in the not so distant future, people will be hooked up to functional MRI machines while they Mindshare, and neuroscience will show that Mindsharing is one of our best ways to also be our most successful selves.
"I think we are also wired to connect in our hearts, and we need one another for more than just survival. We all want to feel that we have meaningful value to give to others, and that we have an ability to influence others and the world. Our greatest natural resource is one another. We don't need natural disasters to come together as friends and communities. With Mindsharing and with our ability to be connected to one another, across the globe, at any given time, we have access to a way of collaborating like never before.
"Mindsharing works because we are all deeply connected. And my struggle to make my dream come true is your struggle to make your dream come true. My quest to find love is the same as your quest to find love. My desire to save money when I buy a car or get a mortgage is the same as yours. Every parent wants the best for their child. When we share our struggles, we share our solutions. When we reach a hand out, there is always a hand reaching back. Always. This is why Mindsharing works so powerfully. We have a fundamental drive to be connected, to be in cooperation, and to contribute to a better world. Mindsharing provides us with the tools, the technologies, and a way to be in connection and cooperation with one another, and to help one another create better lives."
Mindsharing as the natural activity of brains that are wired for connection.
Life Purpose Boot Camp
"1. We are evolved creatures, not designed creatures. If we were designed with some life purpose in mind, we would need to know what that purpose was so that we could live in alignment with it. But the universe provides us with no answers. We are obliged to decide for ourselves not only what our life purposes are but also what we take the phrase life purpose to mean.
"2. There are no life purposes to seek (as if we were sheep who had lost our way). Instead of seeking, we must decide. We must decide whether the phrase even interests us, and, if it does, what it means and implies. To repeat, life purpose is not a given — it's a decision.
"3. If you don't decide to have life purposes, you will not have them. You may stay very busy, you may experience pleasure and acquire things, but none of that is the same as having life purpose.
"4. The following is one way to construe life purpose: a life purpose is a decision to honor something as more important than something else. It is a decision to represent yourself in a certain way because representing yourself in that way makes you feel proud of your efforts. It is a decision to value something, to stand for something, to get something out of life, to give something to life."
Eric Maisel's axioms about seeking our life purpose.
Cities Are Good for You
"The idea of people coming together, sharing the same space and getting on with each other sounds simple but 7,000 years of urban history often disproves this. It was once far easier to know who you were and where you came from; the definition and requirements of citizenship were set out clearly. Yet, as the city grew beyond the boundaries of the first walls, the question of belonging became more problematic. How can you prove you are who you say you are? What are the codes of practice, the behaviour of 'cityness', and how do they evolve? How can you define community when people are on the move so much?
"As the population of the world becomes increasingly urban, redefining community is an ever urgent question. People, families and groups are coming to the city now in greater numbers than ever before; they are arriving at places that are so large and diverse that they cannot simply be defined by one identity. Community may be many things: a shared space, a way of behaving, as well as people; yet the process of belonging is more than anyone of these things alone. It is an ecology that combines place, people and the way they interact.
"But it seems that living together creates serious problems, that jamming so many people into such a tight space makes the city a ticking time bomb ready to explode. Somewhere between the experience of an evening in a Paris salon and the full scale of 9,000 years of urban history the problem of community had become an intractable crisis. How can we challenge this scenario?
"We are hardwired to be together. Despite the fact that we have been told most of our lives that we are all individuals, that survival of the fittest was the only rule of the game, we have been genetically designed to seek each other out and form communities. We are social animals and, as a result, the city is the most natural place for us to be. Our personalities are formed by our relationships with others; our language is shared; it is the connection with others that makes us happy, smarter and more creative. It is only our ability to cooperate that has allowed us to survive thus far. Collaboration is the engine of complexity, connecting us with each other, strengthening the social bonds. As evolutionary biologist Martin Novak writes: 'Cooperation is the master architect of evolution.' ."
Leo Hollis on why we are hardwired to be together.
Life Prayers from Around the World
You and I
Have so much love,
That it
Burns like a fire,
In which we bake a lump of clay
Molded into a figure of you
And a figure of me.
Then we take both of them,
And break them into pieces,
And mix the pieces with water,
And mold again a figure of you,
And a figure of me.
I am in your clay.
You are in my clay.
In life we share a single quilt.
In death we will share one coffin.
Kuan Tao-sheng's poem-prayer about love and life.
Robert Frager, The Wisdom of Islam
All Muslims are required to make a pilgrimage to Makkah if they can afford to do so. . . . In Indonesia today, rural communities will pool their money in order to collect enough for a single couple to make the pilgrimage. No single family could ever earn enough, so each year the community sends the oldest couple who has not yet gone. The whole town will go to the Jakarta airport to see off their "representatives."
All Muslims are required to make a pilgrimage
Making Eye Contact
Although the spoken word is our most common way of connecting, it's also possible to get lost in words or to hide behind them. Eye contact, by contrast, is immediate. It can cut through all our defenses and bring us heart to heart. And it can quickly reveal any personal or interpersonal issues that might be in the way.
The Practice:
For one whole day, make direct eye contact with every individual who crosses your path. Allow the gaze to last at least a full second. Include people you know as well as those you don't. If someone won't meet your gaze, just smile and move on. With each gaze, simply acknowledge and appreciate the humanity shared by you and the other person. Notice what happens in each encounter. How does it make you feel? How does it change what transpires?
A way to connect with those who cross your path.
Bestow Gratitude
In the words of William Blake, "Gratitude is heaven itself." Just the experience of feeling grateful can connect us to a level of loving presence that's as warm and soothing as it is profound. But the bestowing of gratitude is even more heavenly. It creates a feedback loop of joy that keeps increasing as long as you let it.
The Practice:
Think of one or more people for whom you're deeply grateful. Be specific about why they inspire your gratitude. Once you've allowed yourself to exult in that gratitude, go ahead and share it. Don't ask for anything in return from those you thank, except that they receive your offering.
A heavenly feedback loop of joy.
The Pleasure Prescription
Mature Pleasure
"The five principles of aloha, when practiced together, awaken our awareness of our human potential and the sacredness of our life. We taste the profound and lasting joy this awareness can bring, and we begin to actively seek the things and lifestyle that bring us this type of joy. We forsake empty, momentary thrills for whatever brings deeper, lasting, meaningful pleasure.
"To fully appreciate the Third Way of thinking that underlies the pleasure prescription, you must understand the concept of Oceanic maturity. Healthy pleasure is an experience beyond brief intense, uninhibited, and childlike stimulation. To live by the pleasure prescription is to develop a maturity that transcends socioeconomic security, social approval, or private success. Healthy pleasure requires much more than the economic ascendancy emphasized by Western psychology or the spiritual transcendence stressed by Eastern psychology. It requires the type of emotional maturity understood and practiced by the Oceanic cultures.
"In Western culture, adulthood is defined by independence, and cleverness in acquiring, keeping, and protecting assets. In the Eastern paradigm, maturity is based more on individual spiritual criterion. Introspection is emphasized and acquiring individual wisdom and knowledge is a major focus. The Polynesian definition of maturity — being in a growing relationship with others and the world — is seldom a criterion for status in the East or job advancement in the West.
"The Third Way, living by the principles of aloha, emphasizes tolerance and forgiving interdependence. People are of the world, not in it, and so a person is judged adult by behaving responsibly and caringly for the world and by being able to take great pleasure from small things. The enchanted view of the world held by children is seen as the way to adult maturity, not a distraction from it.
"Maturity is a pleasurable life based on daily balanced, respectful interaction with the earth, and a freedom from needing some thing or some insight to flash us into happiness. Unhappiness is not to be avoided but learned from; happiness is to be appreciated but never taken for granted. And, pleasure is a natural gift for caring, not an entitlement. Pleasure is the experience of living life to our full potential without diminishing — but enhancing — others' potential for a joyful life.
"If we view pleasure as a reward for doing and having, we will forever seek it, but never truly possess it. This is because it is based on 'things,' fulfilling internal desires with outside rewards. All desire states are by their very nature temporary, and desire causes desire. Thus, when we have everything we want, we always seem to want more. Progress, development, and change can be highly valued, but only serve to stimulate the drive to more 'getting.'
"If we take the view that pleasure is to be found in self-knowledge and individual insight, too much contentment becomes suspect as indicating worldly rather than spiritual involvement. Like the happiness derived from consumerism, joy from personal discovery is also transitory. The brain never says 'that's enough,' because the brain is wired to pursue never-ending self-preservation.
"Both these approaches stress the importance of not being happy with what you have or how you are. The Third Way of the Oceanic cultures teaches the exact opposite. Instead of always going somewhere, Polynesian culture understands being here. Pleasure comes from joining and helping more than from competitive winning or comparative individual wisdom. It is enough to fish today, to talk to the ocean and its inhabitants, and to share the catch of the day with your neighbors even if you give all your fish away before you get home. They are involved in the joy of sharing all aspects of their existence. What is acquired along the way of the Polynesian path is a true feeling of belonging.
"Buddha taught that 'the cause of suffering is desire, and the antidote to suffering is the cessation of desire.' We are often directed more by our desire for intensity and things than the soul's need for beauty and shared delight. We think that having what we want will bring us joy, but the pleasure principle teaches that true happiness comes with wanting what we have.
"We spend about 15 percent of our waking life eating and taking care of personal bodily hygiene. The health terrorism has taken much of the fun out of even these activities, almost ruining what I call our vegetative joy. We are told that taste is secondary or even a distraction from our health and that we must eat only low fat, high fiber, low cholesterol diets. We have little time to linger in the shower or enjoy a leisurely tooth brushing without attending to ridding ourselves of deadly germs and dental plaque. We seldom even have time for a slow, restful, contemplative bowel movement because we are thinking about our next obligation or attending to the texture and consistency of our waste as another possible health alarm. We are given more and more medical self-test kits so we can detect the earliest possible warning signs. Like people with overly sensitive home security alarms, we end up prisoners of our own fears. As if the purpose of life itself were to be healthy, we lead our lives not knowing that the purpose of health is to find the higher purpose in life — mature, shared pleasure."
Paul Pearsall on how pleasure involves living life to the fullest.
Learning True Love
"One day in 1981, seeing how absorbed I was wrapping parcels for hungry children in Vietnam, Thay Nhat Hanh asked me, 'If you were to die tonight, are you prepared?' He said that we must live our lives so that even if we die suddenly, we will have nothing to regret. . . .
"His words pierced through me, and I remained silent for several days. No, I was not prepared to die. My work was my life. I had found ways to help hungry children, despite the difficulties, and I was happy again, knowing how to avoid the restrictions of the authorities in Vietnam. I knew that every time people received one of my packages or some other helping act, new hope was born in them, and also in their sponsors in Europe and America. If I were to die suddenly, who would continue this work?
"I contemplated many practical questions like these, while following each in-breath and each out-breath. I was not exactly trying to find a solution. I knew that the ability to find one was in me and that when I was calm enough, an answer would reveal itself. So I continued to breathe and smile, and a few days later, I did see a solution. I knew that the only way I could die peacefully would be if I were reborn in others who wished to do the same work. Then my aspiration could continue even if this body of mine were to pass away. I thought about the young people who came to practice mindfulness with Thay, and I decided to share with them my experiences and deepest desires about helping suffering people. I would teach them how to choose medicines, how to wrap parcels, how to write personal letters to the poor, and how to keep Western people in touch with the suffering of the Vietnamese people. Under my guidance, a few young people were inspired to start their own committees, and today there are thirty-eight committees for hungry children. If I die tonight, by a car accident or a heart attack, these thirty-eight reincarnations will allow me to die in peace."
Chan Khong on connecting eternally by passing on one's work to others.