Amir

The miseducation of....

A Photo
Amir

A Musing
Today found me off site working, spending time with Amir. Amir is the most positive and perky doctor I know. Working with him today was a shared and joyous riff on what we were supposed to be talking about and some things that we weren't.
His work portfolio has taken an interesting direction over the last couple of years, out of my comfort zone, but into his. We agreed some goals for him for the coming year, though I'm kicking myself now that this didn't include competency with a hair brush.

A Tune
Talking of riffs, and moving out of comfort zones and not using a hairbrush, todays tune comes from the one in a lifetime genius that is Jimi Hendrix.
I remember - this project it taking me to all kinds of remembering - as I was saying, I remember.. staying over at my Uncle Phil's during my mid teens, he is only 7 years older than me and so saw fit to improve my appreciation of popular music and Friday night pub culture, also trips to watch football in off beat places too.
The music education moved me into rock and some heavy rock which so far had mostly passed me by. 
Sat up Friday night after we returned from the pub watching some music programme (was it the Old Grey Whistle Test?) and out of TV into my life sprung Jimi, idiosyncratic and doing things with a guitar that no one before had even thought about whilst singing All Along the Watchtower.

Dylan's opening lyrics grab your attention like few other opening lines
There must be some kind of way outta here
Said the joker to the thief
and then.....what Jimi did with his interpretation and sheer audacious genius on the guitar riffed on 
There's too much confusion
I can't get no relief
and with such urgency


The middle verse to me still feels so now, so a lyric for our time. 
Then it was Vietnam, maybe now Brexit, rumours of impeachment, climate change.......... life is not a joke. 
There remains an urgent call for us to be knowing, arise, and cast off our conforming selves. 
Does the world needs courageous and wise Jokers and Thief's?


No reason to get excited
The thief he kindly spoke
There are many here among us
Who feel that life is but a joke
But, uh, but you and I, we've been through that
And this is not our fate
So let us stop talkin' falsely now
The hour's getting late, hey


All Along The Watchtower - Jimi Hendrix