Cat Stevens, aka Yusef Islam :: On the Road to Find Out
Why do I write this blog?
I do not write it for you; I write it for me.
I write to learn. I write to find out.
Story illuminates and so too do facts if they can be found.
I want to know more and so everyday I ask a few questions, and then I seek out the answers.
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One thing leads to another.
I figure so long as I keep an open mind, facts will lead to patterns, and patterns will lead to an interesting story and a better understanding of the world.
Is there a frame that encompasses and explains every part of a fact-filled story? What is that frame? Can I hone it down to a few paragraphs?
Can I be disciplined in my thoughts and with my time?
If the facts and stories are of no interest to you, I am OK with that. Not everything is always interesting to everyone.
I write for me, not for you. You are just along for the ride. In this little corner of the Land of Blog, I am the only paying passenger.
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Why write, and not just read?
Because to write something you have to research something, and then you have to organize it, and you have to create a new synthesis.
At the very least you have to find a way to smooth out the words and shorten the tale so it flows into a cogent whole.
You have to make it yours.
Even if the final product is not worth the price paid, at least the process of craft and discipline has its own rewards.
You do not practice for an audience; you practice because it is a discipline.
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If you are serious, you investigate the back story.
If you are writing about now, you take the time to investigate what happened then.
You do not presume that a problem, an industry, a landscape, a people, a place, a law, or a character sprung up whole-cloth on a single day.
If you do it right you come to understand why things are the way they are, and even if they are evil, you know they are rational, and well within the arc of the explainable.
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You started the day with a question.
If it was a real question, and you sought a real answer, the process of self-education has inevitably moved you from where you started in the morning.
If not, there is a good chance you have merely walked around in a great circle, which means there is a good chance you have spent the day with one blinder on.
If you have not moved at all, there's a good chance you have spent the day with two blinders on.
Have you read the opposition? Have you fired on your own position?
When you got up this morning, were you REALLY on the road to find out?
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6 comments:
Right on, mate. Just keep doing your thing. We're bumping down the same road.
That's comforting to me, at least. I know a great mind when I see one!
Thanks for the Zoo and for passing on the world in a better shape than it might otherwise be had it not been for your steady hand in the great valley of the Shenandoah. That's a legacy to be proud of! But no, I suppose the learning never ends. When I am an old man, I will still be a young gardener.
Patrick
I hope you keep writing for yourself but publishing it for us.
It makes me sad to see the old Cat Stevens, with all the love and hope he expressed, and where his own road has led. Seems like he lost his ticket for the Peace Train.
Please tell me 3434 is some cool code that only hipsters understand, and not just some automatic blogger formatting code. 3434...the mystical. ;)
Seahorse
Cat Stevens is an interesting fellow. His original name was Steve Georgiou, and his father was a Greek Cypriot and his mother Swedish, and he grew up above the Moulin Rouge restaurant, which his parents owned and managed. Cat Stevens is a stage name.
Cat was always one of those people with "a hole in his soul shaped like God" and he has always been one of those people looking for a program for living. Things came to a head when he got TB in 1960, and after that he became a vegetarian and began experimenting with Bhuddism and meditation and even Christianity (referenced in the song at top).
In 1976 or so, Cat converted to Islam, whose main attraction was that you dedidicated your life to something OTHER than what Cat had been surrounded by up to that point: fame, money, women, booze, dope, and spectacle. God was a simpler and self-effacing way, and Islam seemed to offer it in a purer form than Christianity (in the first Sura of the Koran, it is noted that Jesus and Moses also are prophets of God).
A lot of nonsense has been said about Cat's conversion to Islam, and some of it has come from Cat himself who embraced his new religion as only a convert will. Now past age 60, Cat (aka Yusuf Islam) has gone back to making music and gives a lot of money to charity. His brand of Islam is the one that I grew up with as a child in North Africa -- people of prayer and charity, rather than violence and politics.
This is an important point: Islam has as many flavors as Christianity and people are not one thing but changelings over a course of a life. Cat's core nature is the same as it ever was -- very much in the Peace Train mold. His Small Kindness foundation ( http://www.smallkindness.org/ ) is associated with the UN and feeds and educated orphans, mostly in the Muslim world. Is there more nobel work? Is there anyone else doing this work? Is there a more direct action Cat could take in his support of an Islan of peace and prayer?
The notion that this man is a terrorist or violent in any way, shape or form is nonsense. He is who he has always been: a gentle man with a hole in his soul shaped like a God, who is trying, as best he can, to understand who he is, and what has happened to him and the world around him. Has he always had pefect pitch? Only on stage. But no, I do not think there is a bad bone in his body. This is a man who some people wish was something else -- a God, a Devil, a savior, or a villain. In fact, he just a good kid from the West End who has surfed through the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and the last decade, the same as the rest of us. Yes he is Muslim now, but I do not count that as a sin any more than I count being a Christian a mark of enlightenment. Show me what you do. By your actions will you be known. In that frame, check out "A Small Kindness" at >> http://www.smallkindness.org/ That is Cat as Cat has always been. By any name, he is the same man, albeit with a few more Koran verses, and a few less Christian, Bhudist and metaphysical references and nods. Same soul, same hole.
P
Patrick, this is good to hear. Frankly, he lost me when he endorsed the proposed hit on Salman Rushdie, and I turned a blind ear immediately. I'll reconsider my feelings and delve in a bit. Thanks.
Seahorse
I've always loved his music. I grew up hearing it in the car on my mom's tape deck, and it was very catchy.
I admit I was bummed by the fact that he chose Islam over music. It sure seemed a waste. I often think of the sacrifices religion "makes" on people, and I admit I wonder why people would subvert their own natures for a deity.
Glad to know more about him.
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