There was a time during my sojourn in Lhasa (Tibet) when all I did for a whole fortnight was find myself a little room to hide away from the crowds, so that I could plough my way through the monumental tome 'A History of Western Philosophy' by Bertrand Russell. I did nothing in those two weeks but live morning, day and night through this book. I took it at its own pace. Putting the book down whenever I wanted to ruminate on what it was saying, feeling free to continue those reflections for as long as I liked before picking it up again, going out for walks to mull over certain passages, thinking about it in bed at night, or when watching the fresh night sky. There was no time pressure. No exams to pass. No place to be. No people to interrupt me. I would take the battered and bruised book with me to breakfast to my local haunt and I'd sup it over whilst devouring hard tac biscuits dunked in green tea. I would sit outside on the balcony to my room with feet wrapped in heavy blankets sipping something hot in one hand - whilst my book hand froze. I would sit outside the stairs of Potala Palace, book on lap, on my very own stairway to heaven. Such are the pleasures of the simple contemplative life. Those two weeks were worth it! As a result of those two weeks hard work, I now take around with me, in my head, a more or less complete history from the ancient Greeks to the present time. I can quote Cicero and Montaigne just as easily as Diderot and Kant. The fact is, that such a historical-eyed view normally takes years of intense academic study to cultivate. Most well educated people don't have it. Luckily I cultivated those seeds in Tibet and look now how they have flourished into a verdant forest!
For me it means that there is always a historical dimension to my views - whether of music, art, politics or philosophy or anything else. I see most things as how they came to be as opposed to fixed things in an immobile present. I see the present as merely something that is likely to change and not something of privilege. I see us all as fish in a raging torrent - an unceasing historical flow - carried aloft on the eddies and slipstreams of an historical narrative. The ancient Hindus believed in cycles. Their timeline was not linear like the western mould with a past, a present and a future. There's was a cyclical constantly rejuvenating historical narrative that disobeyed the linear forms of western history. Under such a non-linear narrative is there such a thing as progress? What does it even mean to say something is better than something else? Why does anything bother to exist at all? Why have something? Why not nothing? What is this space in which I move? Does anything even matter?
To locate your coordinates and pinpoint your location in the river of history takes some doing. It took me two weeks. Two weeks of mornings, days and nights. Two weeks of hard tac biscuits softened in green tea. Two weeks of cold feet and frost embittered fingers. Two weeks of living in a stinky damp blanket. Two weeks of no baths. Two weeks of stubbly cheeks. Two weeks of no girls. Two weeks of no sex. Two weeks of no concerns. Locked away in a corner of the world in a poky little hotel on the roof of the world.
Two wonderful blessed weeks!
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