Power of the Woman Story-Teller, Caroline hosts Prudence Farrow Bruns, (about whom John Lennon wrote the song,) author of “Dear Prudence – The Story Behind the Song.” That we may glean the 60’s Medicine for now.
“A revolution has been quietly growing, a revolution in consciousness. It is time to go deep inside ourselves and experience how much more there is. I believe that access to the transcendental part of the mind is the only way to truly transform ourselves and our world. We won’t become wiser without it, and we have to be wise to create a world living in peace.” www.prudencefbruns.com
As one of my generation (“coming of age in the Sixties”), who were profoundly changed in many ways because of our wild enthusiasm for The Beatles (leading to spiritual journeys via “Eastern mysticism” beyond their music, which both inspired our anarcho-spiritual experimentation and the perfect soundtrack to our new journey of discovery), I always wondered about the song, “Dear Prudence” (by my favorite Beatle: who was she and why the song?) now I know! Wow, what an absolutely amazing story (about the legendary women-names in Sixties song) behind the song.
Prudence is definitely a seasoned survivor of mid-20th century Western Industrial Culture because of the courageous decision and commitment she made as a young woman (in defiance of parents and community) to live her (“counter-cultural”) vision against all odds—having *earned* (as is wonderfully apparent in this precious interview) her psycho-spiritual right to be seen as one of the “Elders” of our generation (one who has lived her life to the full and come out of her trials and tribulations to bring the rest of us struggling seekers a message—she has something to say and we all need to hear it (and I trust we’ll all be the better for it)!
Great program for “The Story Behind the Song” (And what are the many ways people can have their own, particular *entrance* to an {archetypal} Story?) Another stunning testament to a program that finds its audience by exploring the interface between politics and spirituality (or, as the VA would have it, between “activism and animism”).
So I say—for all of us who feel they had a special connection to the Beatles and Sixtes music generally (especially those of us crazy enough to take to the free “community” airwaves to not let that creative era of music/revolution be forgotten)—*read her book*, “Dear Prudence: The Story Behind the Song”! (Admittedly, I may just be—as one of the aforementioned crazy music-radio people—a sucker for not just any “story,” but for the *story behind the song*! (It sometimes happens, in my experience, that such a “story” is so well told that it refers back to the “song” in a new form/meaning, or at least demands a mighty “song” to fully explicate this, and thus give it the wings to ascend to the eternal, ancestral/shamanic realm of the Mythopoetic. (Maybe soulful stories deserve soulful music.)
Btw: the realm of the Shaman/Poet-Song (the primordial poet-singers from ancient Greece to ancient Northern Eurasia), which creates the world, is the very same transcendent realm that that mad-poet ancestor of Prudence’s beloved Beats, William Blake, heretically and bardicly claimed to actually be the source of what humankind calls “religion”. (And Prudence’s message of The Within seems to me exactly Blake’s “human breast.”)
“The ancient Poets animated all sensible objects with Gods or Geniuses, calling them by the names and adorning them with the properties of woods, rivers, mountains, lakes, cities, nations, and whatever their enlarged & numerous senses could perceive. / And particularly they studied the genius of each city & country, placing it under its mental deity; / Till a system was formed, which some took advantage of, & enslav’d the vulgar by attempting to realize or abstract the mental deities from their objects: thus began Priesthood; / Choosing forms of worship from poetic tales./ And at length they pronounc’d that the Gods had order’d such things. / Thus men forgot that All deities reside in the human breast.”
As a degreed student of the same subject that Prudence Farrow Bruns has a PhD in (“South Asian Studies”), I pass on her message off her website.
“A World Living In Peace. A revolution has been quietly growing, a revolution in consciousness. It is time to go deep inside ourselves and experience how much more there is. I believe that access to the transcendental part of the mind is the only way to truly transform ourselves and our world. We won’t become wiser without it, and we have to be wise to create a world living in peace.”