A Sensitivity to Things

Six facts about me as a child, with due respect to Pavitrata.

1. No fast fried pleasures, please

I never spent my pocket money on junk food as a child. Which is not to say that I didn’t like junk food, or to suggest merely a lack of money, but rather that spending hard earned, all too easily lost riches on something lasting but a fleeting moment—the temporary sense pleasure of food—made no sense to me at all.

I remember my early bewilderment clearly, not really understanding my peers as they downed sodas and crisps wantonly, their pocket money flagrantly, and I am not an adult who remembers not his childhood—to a large extent, no small thanks to meditation, it lives and breathes in me still.

It is a great shame this innate childhood common sense became less than innate as the years passed by, a growing worldliness, wisdom of the “ways of men” passing me not.

2. Pop music not so popular

I couldn’t bear popular music as a child. I listened to and owned nothing but classical music until the age of nine, and according to my mother used to cry in my early years if anything less refined was played. I taught myself to play the piano, memorising more by ear than note pieces by the great composers, and used literally to shudder at the sound and sight of punk bands then at their height.

That all changed with the advent of synth-pop—I skipped screaming electric guitar anthems, safety pins in your nose, furious drum solos, and went directly from Mozart to Madonna; Cyndi Lauper, Howard Jones and Nik Kershaw in between.

I was pretty normal from that point on. As a teenager I dreamed of haircuts and concerts, rather than wigs and concertos, and gave up the piano for the guitar after an intense battle of wills with a piano teacher, who told me on the morning of my Grade 3 exam that, lest my results harm her reputation, she was disowning me.

I did fail, by all of four marks, but more due to the fact that I didn’t feel inspired to practise, than any glee sought in tarnishing a disagreeable piano teacher’s name. I had refused to learn music theory; she had refused to teach me as accustomed “by heart.” I may not have been vindicated by my grade, but they have schools today devoted to the instincts I was following.

3. Football was my life

Football was my life for a number of years. Growing up in rugby mad “God’s Own” I rose at ungodly hours to watch “that other game,” fleetingly available when broadcast from the other side of the world, then spent morning, lunch and evening playing same with friends; otherwise just kicking a ball alone.

I was told by a coach at age fourteen that I had the talent to go to the highest level, if I could but “get the right attitude as well,” but it was meditation rather than football that coached me in the power of self-belief; trained out of me, ten minutes practise a day, my nagging, dribbling sense of self-doubt.

4. Turning Japanese

I was fascinated with Japan from an earliest age. When offered the chance by my mother to buy a book on a special occasion, I chose a children’s guide to this implicitly intriguing land of kimonos, karate and kabuki. Soon afterward I demanded lessons in karate, and attempted several times to learn the language—with more enthusiasm than steel or resolve.

Upon adulthood my fascination has waxed rather than waned; a more than decade-long marriage to the practise of meditation just one example of my un-struck appetite for things Nihon.

“Japan is a country filled with infinite beauty. It has an image of a beautiful flower garden. This beauty is expressed through inner peace. Man has seen many things, but of these things peace is new. Japan is offering this new treasure to the world.

“Japan has some other very special capacities to offer. Japan produces such small, beautiful things. God is infinite and finite-larger than the largest and smaller than the smallest. He is both the ocean and the drop. He is inside me as a human being and, again, He is inside the vast sky and ocean. In Japan I see God the Creator in His small aspect, but at the same time, so beautiful and powerful. Here I see the finite expressing the Beauty and Divinity of God in such a powerful way, and I am deeply impressed. It is like the difference between seeing a child do something and a grown-up do it. When the child does it, I get much more joy. In Japan’s case, the child is Japan’s childlike flower-consciousness-a beautiful flower is reaching the highest in terms of beauty and purity. As soon as I think of Japan, my mind feels beauty, my heart feels purity and my life feels humility. I could write hundreds and hundreds of poems about Japan. In fact, I have already written them in the depths of my gratitude-heart.”

Sri Chinmoy, Excerpt from Japan: Soul-Beauty’s Heart-Garden

5. Altar-ed states

I was raised a Christian. Not that I actually enjoyed going to Church, or Sunday School—in fact I would beg my mother every Sunday to leave me at home to watch “Big League Soccer, yet I studied and memorised the stories of faith, courage and heroism in my Picture Bible unbidden, and would pray most evenings without prompting.My last visit to church was around age thirteen, a time when my local congregation, almost completely absent of fellow teenagers, was split pew and rafters over the siting the altar—two metres this way or that I kid you not.

I don’t claim to be high and mighty but I do have a good eye for low and petty, and my hunger for spirituality and inner truth would from this point seek a different nama-rupa—name and form.

6. Interest in a mythical, mid-Atlantic clime

I have always been fascinated by tales of the lost continent of Atlantis. A childhood cartoon, of futuristic cities and technology existing beneath the surface of ocean, caught for only several episodes before sadly it went off-air, evoked hazy, strangely familiar memories that could not be placed; dreams that felt more like memories and that found another flame in stories my mother would tell of her mother, how she spoke cryptically of the existence a long forgotten, long ago buried land—to me a tantalising suggestion that there might still exist a living, breathing link through memories passed to an ancient, mythical mid-Atlantic clime.

Make me a Meme

Write up your own list of childhood facts and I’ll mention you here:

• Pavitrata: Six Childhood Facts—Pavitrata, the “cheerful fellow” who got the ball rolling
• Sumangali: My First Meme—Mummy, mummies, cheese and the reading of minds make for a quite outstanding list of childhood facts
• Sharani.org: The 6 Childhood Facts Meme—Tutus, patent leather shoes and the forbidden fruit of chocolate feature in Sharani’s walk down childhood’s memory lane.

The musical beginnings of British popular artist, vegetarian, practising Buddhist and master of 1980‘s synthesiser-pop Howard Jones were auspicious, although he probably didn’t recognise it at the time. A piano player and teacher from an early age, he was involved in a car accident which left him injured. One of his students—and later wife—Jan Smith, who was in the vehicle at the time, claimed compensation on his behalf, and used the money to buy him a synthesiser—a Moog Prodigy. He was actually sent two by mistake, and liked their combination so much he paid for the second. Thus a synth-pop legend was born.

Howard Jones would appear initially on stage with a mime artist named Jed Hoile, performing improvised choreography whilst doused in white paint. It seems the world wasn’t yet ready for New Wave synth-mime, and Jones made the big time sans improvised mime artist—although Jed was brought back for a special 20th Anniversary retro set in 2003.

The mid-eighties saw a frenzy of albums and top 40 hits in both the UK and the US for this so called “respectable” face of pop, and the single Like To Get To Know You Well, an unofficial anthem to the Los Angeles Olympics, was huge around the world. Jones also had one of the best haircuts in the business, described by one authority as a peculiar early 80‘s combo of mop-top and dyed spikes.

Despite sudden fame, fortune and eight million albums sold, Jones remained true to his ideals, promoting strong feelings for animal rights and and against human excess. His first album, the platinum selling chart topping Human’s Lib, is both a reference in title to the animal liberation movement and the moksha of the Buddhist and Indian religions.

Look in better places gonna look inside
Gonna get higher something is pulling me on
Breaking down the old ways feeling no regret
Gone are the shaky sands Ive been building on
Hunt The Self

Jones’ second album, Dream into Action, also successful, continued a long-standing advocacy of vegetarianism, with the track Assault & Battery pulling no punches:

Children’s stories with their farmyard favourites
On the table in a different disguise

Another song from the album, Hunger For the Flesh, was a lyrical treatise on the Buddhist Noble Truths, Jones singing from the heart about karmic attachment and rebirth:

They came here for to dance
To learn and not to cling
Holding onto life
As if it were the important thing

Is There A Difference continues the album’s strong Eastern theme, lyrics based upon Chapter 20 of the Tao Te Ching (The Way of Life).

A former Christian, Jones was introduced to Buddhism by a friend and never looked back. A devotee of Nichiren Buddhism, a thousand year old Japanese off-shoot noted for it’s focus on the Lotus Sutra and the belief that realisation of the Buddha-nature is in the present life, he chants daily for an hour in the morning and thirty minutes at night.

Twenty years since the peak of his fame, Howard Jones continues his musical quest for enlightenment, releasing Revolution of the Heart in 2005 with a strong lyrical message for inner human change, or to quote the musician himself, “in fact a revolution of the heart.”

A visit to the barber in Turkey: flaming swabs, cut-throat razors and a little too much gel.

“Please sir, you sit down.”

My new best friend motions to something resembling a cabinet covered with a bed-sheet, and impersonating a couch.

“Yes, you sit there.”

I am in a Turkish laundromat, without a single washing appliance in sight, and a large curtain separating tiny front of shop from what sounds like an entire family washing clothes by hand. It may well be by hand, for Turkish Laundry Man tells me that my weighed and charged by the kilo clothing has a turn around time of thirty-six hours.

“My friend, your room number at hotel?”

“666” I reply, and not for the first time here in Antalya, Turkey, am wistfully disappointed that no-one gets the joke in this predominantly non-Christian country.

On the wall behind the counter is a poster for a concert by Sri Chinmoy. An auspicious sign? Turkish Laundry Man certainly thinks so, pointing to the face on one of my t-shirts and then same face on poster.

“You… him… same!” he smiles, genuine enthusiasm undaunted by only rudimentary knowledge of the Queen’s English.

I decline tea—served extra black with lemon in this part of the world—ever present foil to actually getting anything done. In Turkey, were you to actually accept every courteous offer of tea, made with every business transaction completed or just proffered, you would be not only over caffeinated but permanently delayed.

“Can you recommend a barber?” I inquire as I leave, mirror in corner revealing a haircut past fashionably messy and just messy.

“Oh yes,” grins laundry man, “come, my cousin is barber!” Taking me by the hand, a custom which would be extremely uncomfortable back home but absolutely kosher here, he leads me diagonally across the road to a barber shop I somehow hadn’t noticed, where a man with an intimidating stare is holding a cut-throat razor, giving a local the closest shave I have ever seen. There is absolutely no family resemblance.

They converse briefly in Turkish, Laundry Man enthusiastic, Intimidating Barber seemingly disinterested, and a price is confirmed of TKL8, a fare more than fair. His job not only done but exceeded far beyond call, Laundry Man clasps my hand firmly and then departs, imploring me to join him for tea at haircut’s close.

Unlike the laundromat, the barber shop is state of the art, if such a description can be applied to the timeless tradition of men’s hairdressing. European football plays on the satellite channel of a wall-mounted TV set, watched by the coiffed to be from ergonomic, custom built blue barber chairs. A million types of hair product of infinite textures, fragrances and purport line shelves inside sleek plastic tubes and containers, while beside me Turkish language magazines sit in piles for my non-reading, temporary distraction as I await my appointment with master of male grooming.

As with haircuts everywhere, the first order of business is communicating the type of cut desired. Except without use of language, as “short back and sides” produces not a glimmer of understanding. Yet to utter a single word, but thankfully his cut-throat now holstered, Intimidating Barber motions to the top of my head and then the sides with thumb and fore-finger held apart, distance presumably indicating length desired. Resisting the temptation to point to the cover of “Türkiye Man” and say “Same please,” I emulate the gesture, except with a measurement several millimetres less, successfully communicating a clippers cut by narrowing my fingers to just a pinch. Shoved from behind face into a water filled basin, I relax in the knowledge that I am probably going to get a haircut at the very least vaguely approximating what I am used to.

After a minute having my hair washed, Intimidating Barber places a towel covered hand tightly over mouth, nose and eyes, pulling me by face up out of the sink, an act intended to keep water off my face, but also temporarily suffocating me. I wonder at what point breathlessness would overcome polite surrender, should I be unable to draw air for much longer. Possibly not until after I pass out.

While his perpetual frown is a little off-putting, especially when wielding the cut-throat razor—a not so subtle encouragement for prompt payment I am sure—he does appear to be proficient at his trade, employing facets of this art which I was hitherto unaware. Flaming stick to the side of the head is a personal favourite, steel rod wrapped in cotton wool lit and applied in measured daubs around the ears, burning off fine hairs or evil spirits I am not completely sure.

Like me he is not a fan of the “side-burn”—also known as the “mutton-chop” or just plain personal grooming mistake—and, in another excuse to wave cut-throat alarmingly close to vital arteries, skillfully dispatches any hint of such with a few swift strokes.

A confirmation of desired shortness—“no, this short” I signal with my fingers—and we are just about done, a few final adjustments required with comb and scissors.

Did I say done? Maestro appears to have other ideas, and, inspired by a fist-full of styling gel and a look last seen in best forgotten 1980s music videos, twists and then teases my hair into points and spikes, bottle of jelly-like product fast disappearing. I have to desperately restrain myself from laughing at what is taking shape in the mirror, for he regards his craftsmanship most seriously, and expects an approval I would fear not giving.

Barbershop experience is completed with a TKL10 note exchanged, price raised above that quoted but I mind not—the sickly sweet all over perfume applied at close more than justifying this age-old version of “bait and switch.”

For the next ten minutes I am a reluctant Turkish pop star, now rock hard gelled haircut attracting nods of approval from schoolboys passed as I return to my hotel. Cringing, I take the out of sight back entrance up to my room, detachment from care for my personal appearance growing about as fast as recently cut hair.