Anthem

With international sports events now becoming one of the biggest draw-cards for television content directors, we have had the opportunity to be exposed to many national anthems on a regular basis. An anthem is typically a musical piece written as a response to some cause or call. Derived from Greek and Saxon words, the anthem has a place in religious events as well.

Anthems are often emotional expressions if intent, devotion and promise and prayer. In many instances, anthems are seen as tools to engender and unite people around a common cause or country, after wars, or struggles for example. Anthems come from the souls and the hearts of people only when they truly believe in what is being sung.

I thus find it difficult to contend with the modern trend of mixing several languages in one anthem. Unless you understand the language that you are using, how can you feel the emotions stirring in you from the context that comes with language, how can you be truly absorbed in the emotions? I understand that these modern anthems are attempts at consolidation of nations and cultures, but they fail to my mind, because they are compromises. Such a compromise is at best a reminder of something that could have been. I am sure that there will be many comments about my position, and that will be great. However, my idea here is to get to another position, that of the anthem of our souls.

I this piece, my aim is to consider what I call the anthem of the soul. For this, we need to go back to the roots of the word. The dictionary on my MacBook says that an anthem is a rousing or uplifting song, sung antiphonally (from the Saxon antefn and Latin antiphona, and originally from Greek, which indicates an “opposite voice” - or in answer to something). In church, the antiphon was usually sung in response to a psalm, or other part of liturgy. Gregorian chant is an example of the original form.

These chants and songs are devised in a way that makes the words and/or the emotions clear. It responds to a call, a higher voice. In some of my previous pieces on this blog I spoke about how the lack of playfulness, rushing around and an absence of hope whittle us down to nothingness. Our souls are dumbed down by constant insistence by those around us to deliver something, to do things now or to be accountable for even more things. We are brought up to listen closely to the voices of parents and peers, teachers and politicians, and those that can muster the loudest call. We are swamped by the messages and calls on television, radio and the other forms of media, including the internet.

We become deaf to the higher calling in our lives. We stray from the path we are intended to take, our own voices start to fail us, and our language becomes garbled. Where is the energy and belief that fire the devotion to our true role on this planet? It is swamped by the noise and our response to our life’s calling turns into a whisper. In an attempt to compromise, our personal anthem becomes just a reflection of the demands of those shouting us down. We answer in their voices, slowly disappearing as a unique voice. Our souls blend into nothingness, our value diminishes to zero.

We have no anthem left, no rousing song to take us through the day, no way to show our good intent, or to rise to the occasion when we are called to do those things that lift us as humans above the other animals. How can we care for our planet, for the frogs being poisoned, for the birds being pushed out of their habitats, if we have no soul that responds with an uplifting burst of song?
We all need to go back and ferret in the corners of our souls for the song we need to sing to the world. Each one of us must retrain our voice to sing in our own language, with crystal clarity about our call, our intent and our promises to the universe around us. We must not hide behind circumstances or the past. Write a book, draw something, sing the song you always wanted others to hear, play the piano, walk the dog, teach someone something you have mastered, learn from a friend, wave goodbye to old enemies, respond with energy to a sunrise. In fact, do none of the above! I echo Popper, who urged his students to listen closely to what he had to say, if only to be able to dismiss it and to replace it with their own original ideas.

Just bring your anthem to the liturgy of life.

The image above is from my personal library and my not be used without written consent. It is a recent photograph at a wine farm called “Anthem” in New Zealand. This piece is dedicated to my best friend and her quest to sing her anthem as her soul wants and her Creator wishes.

Star Jumps

How did it get so late so soon? Its night before its afternoon. December is here before its June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?
– Dr. Seuss (from the Dr Seuss iGoogle Gadget)

We live in hectic times! Hectic: I like this word, because when you understand where it comes from I think you will agree that it is a proper descriptor for this day and age. According to the excellent built-in writing tools of OSX, the word is derived from the Greek word hektikos, related to hexis, habit, or state of mind or body. In medieval medicine it was used in conjunction with a regularly recurrent fever. Someone with a hectic fever had flushed cheeks and hot dry skin.

We live at a frantic pace. The schedules are insane, the electronic diaries we keep are driving us relentlessly from one meeting or engagement to the next. Our days are chopped up into the Franklin Planner, and the 15 minutes of solitude every day remains as a stark reminder only of what we have again missed today.

Here we are in 2009, running around as if a deadly illness is driving our bodies up the wall, trying to be efficient and sane. We use all sorts of modern technology to help us survive. But I am starting to think that the technology is not helping at all. It is just cranking up the pace. The expectation is now that this blog will come out at around 750 words in less than an hour. This includes thinking about the topic, researching some of the things I wish to say and constructing a readable story, pumping it into the blogosphere and inserting, as a final touch, an appropriate image.

I have 11 applications open at once while I am typing away. Three of these are related to the topic, 3 are communication related applications, allowing me to see who is online now so I can organise and discuss other tasks, one is monitoring bandwidth usage and two are doing methodical searches for a document I am preparing on simulation. The other two applications hold images and drawings in several stages of completion. Today is Sunday, it is a slower day. By the way, one of the applications is a browser with four tabbed windows in it, because I am also looking for cheap car rentals, I am trying to track a flight so that I can see if it is on time and two windows contain weather information and news items.

What is the point of this, you ask? You have more things on the desktop, more things in the car, more things on the mobile phone, more beeps on the berry, and several thousands demanding attention from a device starting with “i” something. My point is that all of these things are making us hectic. The bringing together of so many information streams are taxing our bodies and minds. It is not integrated in a way that allows me to actually have time for myself. It is in fact often tools in the hands of relentless masters to ask why you seem to be inefficient. The reality is that all these tools are just that - tools: they do not create extra time for me to think. If the expectation was that this blog would take a day, and I still used the modern tools to do it, this might have been a really good piece. I could think about the flow, the arguments, and the aesthetics. Now, it is a quick piece, just a blog!

When I looked at the word hectic in a message I was sending, I realised that we are not maintaining our bodies and minds as we should, using the modern technology to be efficient, rather than frantic and hectic. We should now have more means to understand how to maintain balance. We should stop promising delivery to the levels of insane expectations of a few that have lost the plot already. Someone has to argue for quality and beauty to become norms again, to ask that people become appreciative of the way that the brain dumbs down if we do not calm down and to ask that we use time to consider the real problems we face on the planet.

We need to be able to walk away from it on a regular basis, to breathe country air, to walk in isolated places and to listen to the wind in grass and leaves, to imagine positive outcomes, where the schedule is subservient to the goal. Smile, jump, bring the fever down with a cup of tea, a good book, some calming music and a long hug of a fellow inhabitant of the planet. Then we’ll have energy to be smart, to be efficient and to make the time to play.

Star jumps are not just for kids, but before you try this at home, you have to relax and release, then imagine weightlessness and flying. The star jump also leaves you with a blush on the cheeks, but there is no fever. It is hectic in another sense - in the sense of experiencing the sheer thrill of being a kid again! Remember those endless days...?

In appreciation of my beautiful friend - the star jumper!
The image is not for re-use without her written consent.