Music Before the Money

Striving ahead with my plan to convert my 8 novels into ebooks I have enlisted the help of an illustrator. This will include (of course) the cover but I plan to include maps and pictures in the novels, as well. Maps will work out especially well to put the reader where the story is taking place. I know it’s difficult to imagine a map of northern France let alone follow a story where the location keeps bouncing back to England.

For my first ebook, “Brian Jones’ Diary,” I will be enlisting the help of my good friend, Babs Walker.

Cave drawings, despite being one of the oldest written histories of human life, depict an insight into the human behavior of the times that is overshadowed by the obvious archaeological significance. At Lascaux, France and other sites the drawings of animals, hunters and mystical beings were a constant reminder of their life and what it took to succeed. But did they portray another factor of human behavior?

In another French cave in Les Trois there is a 13,000 year-old wall painting which experts believe is a medicine man mimicking an animal spirit. Is he calling out to the animals to allow his hunting party to be allowed to slay them for their food value? Or maybe he is acting out the mannerisms of the quarry so that the hunters can see the kill before it happens? And if the latter is truly the case could this be the first recorded act of visualizing a goal in preparation for the real act as many sports personalities claim to perform before the big game?

Many aboriginal tribes have used visualization before battle and have set it into their minds by singing and dancing before the act. Their victory, it could be argued, was achieved before the first arrow or spear was launched in that they saw it happen beforehand. These are examples of goals being created, set and fulfilled ahead of time while using visual and audio stimuli to keep them in their minds and their objectives on track.

What we do now in life can be programmed in a similar way because success in life is no different today than it was during the cave dwellers’ era: setting goals to succeed. Of course not succeeding thirteen thousand years ago was a lot more deadly than it is today! It meant starvation and/or the obliteration of the tribe.

Programming of the mind is also valuable tool of the military both past and present. The “boot camp” training of inputing information and then reinforcing these skills with direct and repetitive drills enables commanders to control them on the battlefield. In the past, martial music and visual aids, like flags and banners, were also used as enforcements to bolster the minds.

This is not to say that we should all be like hunters or warriors to achieve our goals. However, some aspects of modern business training do mirror behaviors that are eons old.

In my last post I expounded the non-virtues of bands in the ’70’s and ’80’s buying school buses. This was because I felt they were uneconomical as transportation due to the age of the vehicles when they are let go by the school districts. However, I must now level the field with some pluses:

The buses could:

1) Carry the whole band: members, light and sound guys, and all the girlfriends and hangers-on.

2) Carry all the sound and light equipment; and,

3) Bring along mountains of personal effects: barbecues, TV’s, stereos, etc.

Another use for the bus  I saw first-hand in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan (Yes, I’ve been there many times). Our band travelled in two regular-sized Ford vans which was claustrophic at times but we managed to fit everything in. After loading in on Sunday night (Sunday was travel day), if it was summer, we would hop in one van and find a drive-in movie. This night, I believe, the movie was “Fort Apache; The Bronx” starring Paul Newman.

The movies just got started when a super-long school bus drove down the lane in front of us and drove to the back row. Instead of pulling into one of the row of empty stalls the bus parked sideways taking up about 5-6 spaces. Then the occupants, a dozen wierd and wonderful specimens, piled out of the front door and climbed the ladder at the back of the bus and onto the luggage rack on top. The speakers (again, 5-6 of them) were then handed up and the movie-goers popped open lawn chairs and flipped open a beer cooler. In less than two minutes there were twelve people watching Paul Newman while sucking on cold ones.

I did what anyone would do under the circumstances. . . . I joined them up on the bus and, at the end of the movie, went back to the van with an Altec Lansing belt buckle, a gift from the soundman.