From Joe Boyd’s book:

In the wake of the Moors’ expulsion, playing an oud could land you in big trouble with the Inquisition, so around the courts most musicians turned to the vihuela, a small guitar-shaped instrument with six pairs of strings tuned like a lute. And the vihuela turned into the guitar.

The relationship is even clearer in Portuguese where the guitar is called Violão, which sounds a lot closer to Vihuela.

The following paragraph is a rough translation from a German book I am reading. (((thanks to Steve for letting me know about this gem of a book!))) The book is called Vita Contemplativa and is by the Korean-German philosopher Byung-Chul Han. It’s been translated into many languages but I wanted to read the original. The second half of the quote really hits home. In a way social media attempts to force us to express ourselves continuously, filling every silence. Many people seem to use it in this manner.

Only silence enables us to say something unheard of. The compulsion to communicate, on the other hand, leads to the reproduction of the same, to conformism: “The difficulty today is no longer that we cannot express our opinions freely, but rather to create spaces of solitude and silence in which we can find something to say. Repressive forces no longer prevent us from expressing our opinions. On the contrary, they even force us to do so. What a liberation it is to not have to say anything for once and to be able to remain silent, because only then do we have the opportunity to create something that is increasingly rare: something that is actually worth saying.”

I added the emphasis. And later:

The compulsion to act, indeed the acceleration of life, proves to be an efficient means of control. If revolution does not seem possible today, then perhaps it is because we have no time to think. Without time, without taking a deep breath, the same thing continues. The free spirit dies out.

The compulsion we feel to constantly react to social media posts and news, but also to all messages and calls, doesn’t let us take a breath and form a coherent thought. Ours becomes a reactive life, always running after something, but never quite reaching it. Always behind. This becomes a means of control. Keep the rats running in their wheels. They will exhaust themselves and won’t be able to breathe or think. The phone has become the wheel.

Behaving like a mule, standing still, not taking orders, not being reactive at all, is the finest response to the present day rush. A mental sit-in. We can create a focus setting on the phone, press engage, and do nothing. I have my phone set up to give me a summary of notifications at 0900 and 1800. Hold my messages. Perhaps that’s even too much and I should switch to once a day, because I do notice the difference it makes.

Now add meditation to the recipe and see where that leads. Meditation is a truly radical act, the act of saying stop, wait, hold that thought. I am just sitting here minding no business at all.

And here is a photo of coffee from Seattle: