Songs on a Desert Island

Lately I've been exploring the website for Desert Island Discs. It's a radio show where guests choose eight musical pieces they'd take to a desert island. The guests then discuss how each piece relates to their lives. Here are my picks:

1. Vorspiel/Weia! Waga! Woge, Du Welle!
Composer Richard Wagner
Performer Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
CD Title Wagner: Das Rheingold

The prelude to Wagner's Ring Cycle, it's been described as the creation of the universe in a slowly unfolding movement. Great for watching the ocean wash onto a beach of a desert island.



2. Birdhouse in Your Soul
Composers John Flansburgh and John Linnell
Performer They Might Be Giants
CD Flood

The song is said to be about a child's nightlight, but it always reminds me of my wife. Flood was in the the air when we fell in love and it makes me smile every time I hear it.



3. Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End
Composer John Lennon and Paul McCartney
Performer The Beatles
CD Abbey Road

The medley of song fragments that ends Abbey Road, so it's three songs for the price of one. "And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make." Sappy and true.



4. Minor Incident
Composer Damon Gough
Performer Badly Drawn Boy
CD About a Boy

A nice message of parental love from About a Boy. Like novelist Nick Hornby, I also have an autistic son and the lyrics resonate with me the same way. (listen to the song, ignore the video).



5. We Are All Made of Stars
Composer Moby
Performer Moby
CD 18

I think it was Carl Sagan who said, "I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together...Goo goo ga joob." Gesundheit!



6. Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 IV. "Ode to Joy"
Composer Ludwig van Beethoven
Performer London Symphony Orchestra
CD Title Immortal Beloved

Classic. Transcendent. I'm fond of the scene in Immortal Beloved where an aged Beethoven attends the song's premier, recalls his boyhood, and touches the stars (turn your volume up).



7. The Body of An American
Composer Shane MacGowan
Performer The Pogues
CD Poguetry in Motion

Could I make a song list without including the Pogues? This one has it all: death, drinks, love, loss, drinks, gypsies, boxing, war, and the longest accordian denouement I've ever heard.



8. Into the West
Composer Fran Walsh, Howard Shore, Annie Lennox
Performer Annie Lennox
CD Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

Finally, my desert island songs would include this one from The Return of the King where the hero sails into the afterlife. I'd like to think the end will be just like that.



So, what are your desert island songs?

Bacon and Bananas

Welcome to Bacon of Sanity, a blog of random thoughts about our interesting times. Why Bacon of Sanity? I was thumbing through a magazine recently when I came across the phrase "a beacon of sanity."

My mind was wandering and I thought it read "bacon of sanity." At first I thought, "That sounds odd." After reading the words again, I realized:

1. The article was not about bacon.
2. "Bacon of Sanity" would make a nice name for a blog.
3. I had a sudden craving for bacon.

The mind is like that. It wanders a lot. We spend a lot of time dreaming about stuff we don't have. We sweat the small stuff that doesn't matter. We sweat the big stuff we can't change. We regret yesterday. We worry about tomorrow. And we usually do it all at the same time.

Buddhists call this our "monkey mind." It's like our brains are rooms full of monkeys. All day long, the monkeys swing around, eat bananas, pick fleas, fling poo, and type the complete works of Shakespeare, which they never seem to finish.



We can't get rid of the monkeys. But we can keep the fleas and poo at manageable levels. Or at least let the monkeys out to play sometimes.

Which leads me to Charles Darwin. This year is the bicentenary of his birth, as well as the 150th anniversary of On the Origin of Species, which set out his theory of natural selection.

Darwin definitely had a monkey mind. He spent years obsessing about voyaging vegetables, floating pigeon corpses, ostrich dominance, and ash-eating earthworms. He also worried about what other people would think of his ideas--so much that he waited decades to publish.

He was right to worry. Darwin's ideas are still debated and not just the man-from-monkey thing. One example is the so-called "mind-brain" problem. Let's put the problem in bacon terms. When "I have a sudden craving for bacon" crossed my mind, where did the idea come from?

Some people believe the mind is merely a side-effect of brain chemistry. So, the brain knows that fat is important. Its needed for vitamin digestion, insulation, body temperature, cell function, and disease resistance. "Since Bacon is fat, I better eat some," the brain says.

Other people believe the mind is separate and distinct from the brain. So, while the brain knows that bacon is unhealthy, the mind loves it. "Since everything is better with bacon, I better eat some," the mind says.

So what does this have to do with Darwin? Jon Hamilton recently reported on the interesting debate over the mind-brain problem between creationists and scientists. According to Michael Egnor, a neurosurgeon who writes for the Evolution News & Views blog:

"There is nothing about neurons that scientifically would lead you to infer consciousness from them. They're masses of gelatinous carbon and hydrogen and nitrogen and oxygen, just like other kinds of flesh. And why would flesh have first-person experience?...My personal view is that we have souls and that they're created by God..."

Steven Novella, a neurologist who writes for the Neurologica blog, disagrees:

"If you change the brain, you change the mind. If you damage the brain, you damage the mind. If you turn off the brain, you turn off the mind...[The brain] can do things that can plausibly cause consciousness and self-awareness..."

Who's right? The argument for "intelligent design" can be boiled down to this:

1. The world is magical.
2. Magic isn't an accident.
3. Ergo, God exists.
4. Ergo, Darwin was wrong.

I agree that the world is awesome. Personally, I can't imagine there not being a God. But why does that make Darwin wrong? What if God got the ball rolling and natural selection is a part of his plan? Why can't the brain, as a creation of God, love, learn, and dream of bacon? God, life, the universe, and everything are perfectly natural--there's nothing "supernatural" about them.

What about scientists? Their argument can be boiled down too:

1. I've never seen God.
2. Ergo, God doesn't exist.
3. Ergo, Darwin was right.

I've never seen God, but I've never seen an atom either. Can't they both exist? Science is only really concerned about what we can observe. It doesn't care about what it can't observe. Science can't observe art or love or truth. It can't ask whether there is a God or a soul. It doesn't even know the question.

There's a funny bit in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where a group of aliens build a computer to discover the answer to life, the universe, and everything. After 7 million years, the computer says the answer is "42," but its forgotten the question.



Nhat Hanh, a monk who doesn't have a blog, suggests the question may not matter:

"The Buddha always told his disciples not to waste their time and energy in metaphysical speculation. Whenever he was asked a metaphysical question, he remained silent. Instead, he directed his disciples toward practical efforts."

His disciples kept bugging him, so the Buddha answered:

"Whether the world is finite or infinite, limited or unlimited, the problem of your liberation remains the same."

They still weren't satisfied, so the Buddha finally answered:

"Suppose a man is struck by a poisoned arrow and the doctor wishes to take out the arrow immediately. Suppose the man does not want the arrow removed until he knows who shot it, his age, his parents, and why he shot it. What would happen? If he were to wait until all these questions have been answered, the man might die first."

In other words, what if humans have no soul or God doesn't exist? What if everything does have a divine spark? It shouldn't change how we live.

"Life is so short," says Nhat Hanh, "It must not be spent in endless metaphysical speculation that does not bring us any closer to the truth." Big ideas are fun to debate, but we shouldn't get stressed about. As Monty Python says (increase your volume):



It's all just bacon and bananas in the end. Why spend so much time worrying about the monkeys?