DangerMouse And The Philosophy of Absence
Have you heard the new Danger Mouse CD? You may think that you haven’t, but you have. (It sounds a lot like George Harrison’s 33 1/3.)
As a result of some mysterious disagreement with EMI, Danger Mouse just put out a blank CD. It’s writeable and comes with a book of photos by David Lynch, so not a complete waste of money. Perhaps it will inspire some to record their own music onto DM’s CD.
Recently I’ve been thinking a lot (or trying not to think) about mindfulness — being in the moment. It’s very tricky. I realize I’m not very good at it, even though I would have expected it to be quite easy.
My own path toward mindfulness started with meditation and moved on to brain training with an extended detour into yoga. Brain training has shown me just how fleeting mindfulness can be. Some days I struggle mightily to hold onto the training sequences for just 20 seconds. That doesn’t seem like very long to try to stay mindful, but I guess it is.
I recently read about mindful walking. I’ve been trying it out. As you walk you try to keep your mind on your physical body in the act of walking. (It’s OK to pay attention to walk-signs, traffic and dog crap, too.) After a few steps I find I’m thinking about something else. At which point I start again.
I’ve been practicing being mindful while I give Otto a bath, too. He’s 14 months old and he enjoys his bath. There’s a lot to stay mindful on and for when Otto’s in the tub. He likes his yellow rubber duck and smiles when I make it go “quack.”
Mindfulness strikes me as a kind of antidote to our frequent absences from the here and now. We resort to thoughts of past, future, and fantasy as a way to avoid or numb the act of “being.” In meditation and eastern philosophy the act of “being” carries great significance and import. If we are absent in our thoughts we are in some important sense absent from the world.
But even the mindful mind cannot derive any substance from the act of being. Every moment disappears from us. There is nothing tangible to grasp. Mindfulness prods us with the stick of immateriality, of nothingness.
It’s here that I sometimes come full circle, knowing that we can be mindful of our thoughts, too. And, in some ways our thoughts present an aspect of existence that one can consider tangible. The rules of existence. Logic, math, relationships between objects, physical laws. The unchanging ideas of existence remain, even as the fleeting objects of existence elude us.
DangerMouse has given EMI a taste of absence, of lack — “this is the world of EMI without DangerMouse,” his new release says. Which makes me think that I have never knowingly heard any music by DangerMouse. Perhaps this CD is not the place to start.