What is the United States’ trajectory? How can we get there without doing damage to our storied history and future?
I wrote liner notes for guitarist Gabor Szabo’s “Dream” album in 1968. What strikes me, in rereading this reflection piece 53 years later, is that humanity has not made significant progress on the planet, in all of its variations of political shifts, technological “advances” (are we any better?, smarter?, more evolved?, more ‘spiritual’ entities?). The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind… You know the answer. Welcome to the year 2021. Dreams, anyone?
The west shall shake the east awake…while ye have the night for morn…– James Joyce
The revolution is going well – or poorly, depending on your viewpoint your viewpoint. Anyone who refuses to admit that there is a revolution, though, soaks his psyche in linseed oil and dozes during the 11:00 p.m. news. Those who burned incense before the glass fishbowl during “Peyton Place Visits Chicago, 1968 (script by Richard Daley) witness the symptoms of a growing disaffection among our citizens for the prospect of $125/week and all the fringe you can eat. It may be that our priorities are confused, the we should focus on starvation and injustice within our boundaries before making more rubbish deposits on the moon. Or perhaps that the planned obsolesce of View Nam is moving a bit more quickly than we originally intended.
Sources close to both parties say that God is more confused about what is happening than Marshall McLuhan, who is at least offering explanation, however cobwebby. God, rumor has it, has opted for a brief (perhaps) hilarious in Acapulco and more than one of us have considered joining him. Yet, the ritual which involves us proves too engaging; to abandon the struggle is to abandon the human race, and that is unthinkable.
The beauty of Gabor is that he speaks fluently of that unity which we seek. Listen, closely now, with the ear of your soul, and let him speak to you. He is saying that the inner probe is worth the effort, and more: that it is necessary if we are to survive. He is saying: extend your hand and touch the soul of another, for he is your brother. He is saying: balance your quest for externals inner tranquility, or your soul will wither.
Under Gabor’s fingertips, the east is awakening, and the spiritual revolution is taking root and seeding, like a hardy desert flower in the land of sand. For those who have ears to hear all that is possible, the potentials are infinite.
Be at peace, now, and bend an ear to Gabor.
Bill Ardis