8,045,311,447 Worlds
And Bright Promises

So many things happen to us each day: upsets, anxieties, doubts, desires, fears, loves, hungers, hates, thirsts, confusions, boredoms, the list goes on pretty much endlessly: each occasion of which, as if this were its true purpose, results in deflection and loss of momentum.

That is the way of the world: a subtle (or not so subtle), elaborate arrangement to ensure that we do not escape, that we do not slip out of the planet’s grip.

Yes, at times, this Earth has me convinced it is naught but a stage designed to cast us off course, a stage intended to steer us into attention-devouring conflicts and stealthy swamps whenever we embark on a course that seems to us for a bright and promising moment to hold the truth, to lead us to a spiritual far-away somewhere. And then, bolstered by heart-felt enthusiasm, we set out for this vision only to a moment later (be it seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, even years) find ourselves back where we started, or worse.

How bright and how promising must such a moment be to stay alive and transcend the earthly fray to keep us on course, all the way? How inspiring the words? How uplifting the song? How clear the path?

I am a sixties’ child. By this I mean that I (along with many others) found what I believed and hoped was my spiritual feet during the 1960s. Born in the fall of 1948 I was 18 years old when Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was released on May 26, 1967 (just a few days before Moby Grape released their eponymous and incredible—just about as good as Sgt. Pepper in my opinion—first album on June 7), culminating a year of amazing music to find its way to my cold (though well-equipped stereo-wise) Stockholm apartment.

The Beatles—along with Country Joe and the Fish, Jefferson Airplane, Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan, Donovan, The Doors, Moby Grape, et al.—elevated my dreary day-to-day into promise, into delight, into if not knowing then at least into hoping there was more to life than waking, eating, working, sleeping, waking, eating, working, sleeping, waking, ad infinitum.

And for many a bright moment the promise held true: I could sense the voice that called to me, I sensed where to go (toward music, toward poetry, toward philosophy, toward art) and I knew that if I believed and if I followed the advice (explicit or implied) of these wonderful and often mystic lyrics, then I would reach the other shore where I could and would lead a happier, more meaningful, a spiritual life. The other shore did exist, I was sure of it, I could almost see it, it was almost within reach—just out of.

Yes, I could feel it, the direction tugging, my little craft eager to toss her moorings and be off.

And then, some hours later: a new, gray morning. Rain in the air. Or snow. A little late for work. Crowded bus. Bitter coffee. No distant shore. The dreary normal won out, again.

The promise, so alive last night, so meaningless this morning, did not survive the night. How true then, how deep and strong would the promise have to be, how brilliantly lit and firmly grounded in truth would the path have to be to effect real—and lasting, as in surviving the night, the week, the year—change?

I have asked myself this question many times over the years. And I ask it again now when it comes to Joni Mitchell’s songs—still, to me, the pinnacle and essence of artistic and creative achievement.

I ask, did her songs change the world for the better? I look around me and must conclude that despite many, many professed and avid Joni Mitchell admirers: no, they did not.

Did Bob Dylan change the world for the better? I look around me and determine: no, he did not. Did the Beatles? The Rolling Stones? Donovan? No, they did not—the world remains much the same today as it was in the sixties, or the seventies, or at any time between then and now. Possibly worse.

Probably worse. Definitely worse.

All that beauty flung in the air, all that truth. Just chaff for erratic winds, that in the end leaves a busy, indifferent, me-me-me world unmoved by any of it.

I have to admit that now, at my age, I no longer know what, if any, artistic voices hold out such sixties-like, other-shore promises these days, but I am sure that they exist, they must: the pathfinders, the truth seekers, the visionaries—as writers, as singers, as painters, as dreamers. And, I am equally sure that their promises are not changing the world either.

Is there then no hope?

I believe that as long as we still conceive of a distant shore, as long as we still envision a more meaningful existence, as long as we pray and dream in that direction, yes, then there is hope. Has to be.

But how faint is that hope in the face of wholesale and daily terror, in the face of all-too-obvious political insanity, in the face of prevalent and constant greed and narcissistic overindulgence and consumption? So faint, I think, as to be barely discernible.

Does the world itself care? Not so much, no.

Then I remember, brilliantly: The Incredible String Band. No, they did not change the world, but they did change my world.

Mike Heron and Robin Williamson painted me a promised shore that shone brightly enough to survive even my darker nights. More than poetry and melody, their songs (much more than the sum of their parts) lifted me high enough that I could actually see the other shore, could actually know that, yes, it did exist.

They changed one world: mine. Profoundly. And maybe others’ as well—I’d be very surprised if they did not.

Which begs this question: how many individual worlds did Joni Mitchell change? Did Bob Dylan change? Did the Beatles change? Not enough to change the world, that is clear to me, but still: now I realize: The Earth is changed individual world by individual world.

And, what is our planet if not a baker’s eight billion different worlds?

For I ponder: Does, in fact, a true objective world exist? One that possesses a self of its own, an objective self, distinct and different from the myriad selves that inhabit her? No, I think not. A collective something with a single identity of its own: No, I think not.

I believe Gaia is, as Jung would have put it, our collective unconscious.

Same as “the people” does not exist objectively as a unit that has desires and goals unrelated to the many individual selves that make up “the people.”

So, when I ask how bright and how promising must a moment be to keep us on course, how inspiring the words, how uplifting the song, how clear the path? When I’m asking this, I am truly asking how clear and bright must the promise be to change eight billion worlds, one by one.

And this is why I write: I want to help stir and steer eight billion worlds.

I want these many worlds to wake up tomorrow and smile at each other, each knowing that the shimmering shore at the far side of this rushing, worldly river does indeed exist and that there is a way to cross this river.

Yes, that is why I write.

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