Sweet smell of success

Always loved the Travelling Wilburys. Love the video of Handle with Care. Great vocals from the Big O. One moment of magic is near the end when George Harrison sings the line:- "Sweet smell of success" and Roy Orbison, coming into view in the background, has a great smile that for me "says it all", whatever "all" might be.

Not enigmatic at all. Just a simple smile as two friends share a sense of reality. The limits of "success". Not enigmatic but clear and unambiguous. Both have known "success" and know how pointless a life striving for it can be. Roy can smile. Both can smile. Beautiful moment.

Dylan of course is in his own world yet somehow part of everyone elses.

[media=https://youtu.be/1o4s1KVJaVA]

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SW-User

I feel a waffle coming on. Therapeutic. At least for me if not for others...... A little back in time a mate and myself would visit another old mate who had ended up in a Care Home. His mind drifted a bit and we would get his photo album out and try to nudge his memories. He also liked music and had a few albums in his room although we weren't really sure if he ever got to listen to them. One visit conversation turned to the Travelling Wilburys and our mate said how much he liked them. Next visit I brought along my copy of the TW''s first album and left it with him.

I never saw it again and I joked to my mate who I visited with about my loss, and how much I liked the Wilburys. That Christmas I received a nice present from him, a copy of the Complete Wilburys, both albums and DVD. Good stuff!

Getting onto the quote of Merton's regarding "success", I once quoted this on another forum and it was received by one guy who was not impressed at all. If that was how Merton saw it, "I'm finished with him" he responded, then in all probability popped off quickly in pursuit of success! As I see it the poor guy had missed the paradox - that for all intents and purposes Merton WAS in fact a "success"! That the pursuit of it only turns it into an object that recedes ever further from our grasp. Like everything of value, it is a question of gift, grace. Our only response is gratitude.

Merton actually explains the mechanics of this in his fine essay that can be found in his book "The Way of Chuang Tzu", the essay entitled "A Study of Chuang Tzu". I see the mechanics as to be found in [i]hakarai[/i], the Pure Land way, where things are [i]made to become so of themselves beyond our calculation[/i]. Or as said in a little verse to be found in St Marks Gospel, in one of the little Parables of the Kingdom, "For the earth brings forth fruits of herself." All we need is faith, green as a leaf.

Well, that is all for now. I've managed to down another McDonald's burger and the Oxfam tills await.

Keep safe.

hunkalove · 61-69, M

Mercy! I saw Roy at my local county fair in 1965 when I was 15. One of the best concerts I've ever seen. And I got to hang out with him a while afterward.

Mamapolo2016 · F

Dylan does have that look when he glances up. "You still here?"

SW-User

@Mamapolo2016 Hi there, here's another video, "End of the Line." You must have seen it. Dylan in more expansive mood, I think he even cracks a smile! Then the rocking chair, empty apart from a guitar, in love of the Big O who had reached the end of his line. Perhaps not. Heartbreaking yet beautiful.

[media=https://youtu.be/UMVjToYOjbM]

Mamapolo2016 · F

@SW-User I just watched that (again) last evening!

Although there's no comparing musical quality, music is, in the end, communication, and the Wilburys remind me of uncounted evenings on somebody's porch, when someone called out "The fiddle's here!" as an old man crawled out of his pickup truck, waving, and joined the guitars, a dobro, a harmonica, all manned by their human friends, talking to each other. Then the harmonizing voices, the crickets in the fields, the peepers and bullfrogs by the creek, rose in celebration.

BigBulge · 41-45, M

They, by mere chance, came together and created, "lightening in a bottle."

hunkalove · 61-69, M

@BigBulge Like bleach?

SW-User

A great quote here from Thomas Merton on "success":-

[i]If I had a message to my contemporaries it is surely this: Be anything you like, be madmen, drunks, and bastards of every shape and form, but at all costs avoid one thing: success . . . If you are too obsessed with success, you will forget to live. If you have learned only how to be a success, your life has probably been wasted.”[/i]

― Thomas Merton "Love and Living"

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