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Author Topic: SMiLE-A Zen Interpretation?  (Read 7749 times)
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« on: June 09, 2008, 07:02:51 PM »

I came across this website which claims that SMiLE was originally conceived as a Zen (koan) riddle based on Brian's LSD experiences....or something along those lines.  Some of it's pretty "out there" reading, but it's also kind of entertaining. I'm always up for any SMiLE related discussion. For anyone who has seen this site, what do you think of the author's interpretation?
http://pages.cthome.net/tobelman/
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« Reply #1 on: June 10, 2008, 08:11:22 AM »

I think the creator of the site, Bill Tobleman, posts fairly regularly here so maybe he could give you his opinion!

If I remember from reading his site, he believes that BW and VDP purposefully created Smile as a sort of Zen riddle, for the listener to solve. It's a fascinating idea but personally I find it unlikely that the creators deliberately sort to create a zen koan.

I can see where he is coming from on this whole zen riddle thing though. As an arguably incomplete work I think Smile causes lots of sadness to some Beach Boys fans. Certainly to the more obsessive amongst us, endless reworking of Smile mixes can be at once enjoyable, but also frustrating in the impossibility of discovering what Brian intended in 67. One is left with a yearning for the peace that a legitimate 67 Brian Wilson sequenced Smile would bring, but of course that is now impossible! Therefore I think the most zen lesson that Smile can teach us is to accept the music as it is: beautiful but incomplete, or you can take solace from the fact that he finally completed Smile in 2004, although I know many here find that theory hard to stomach!
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« Reply #2 on: June 10, 2008, 12:13:28 PM »

Well said.
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« Reply #3 on: June 10, 2008, 02:51:01 PM »

To the notion of Bill's zen interpretation...

I would say that it would be hard to deny the mantra-like quality of those "Smile" pieces, particularly some of the recuring themes that grew out of "H&V." Besides being introduced to Alan Watts and Del Close/John Brent works in 1966, you have Brian in Los Angeles, hanging with individuals that were well-versed in L.A. bohemia. Not to mention that Los Angeles has long been home to one of America’s most powerful occult scenes... already packed with Theosophists and Hindu gurus. There is a pervading mood here that looks like whimsy from the outside, and maybe that's what it's reality has grown to these many years later. But I can only think of works by the likes of Kenneth Anger, Curtis Harrington, Nathaniel West and Chet Baker, which point to something far more personal at the edge of the earth.

Sorry for my little attempt to go deep... "some dance to forget..."
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« Reply #4 on: June 11, 2008, 05:36:03 AM »

Speaking of theosophists (I'm not one of them), I recently came across a possible theosophical reading of SMiLE (2004). More on this later.
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« Reply #5 on: June 11, 2008, 07:26:33 AM »

While I respect the opinions of those who believe in a SMiLE-Zen connection, and it does make for some interesting reading and conversation, I always believed the motivation for SMiLE was just Brian and Van Dyke taking a lot of drugs and trying to make the best music they could make. Sorry if that's over-simplifying.
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« Reply #6 on: June 11, 2008, 08:53:37 AM »

While I respect the opinions of those who believe in a SMiLE-Zen connection, and it does make for some interesting reading and conversation, I always believed the motivation for SMiLE was just Brian and Van Dyke taking a lot of drugs and trying to make the best music they could make. Sorry if that's over-simplifying.

Haha I'm with you Sheriff. I know Brian was into numerology or stuff like that around the SMiLE era but I think the only thing Brian really cared about was making the best music possible and music that would "blow people's minds".
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« Reply #7 on: June 11, 2008, 09:31:36 AM »

Sheriff John...

I gotta say... I'd be against any notion that Brian and Van Dyke were adding up syllables or counting off certain astrology or numerology cadences or whatever. I kinda feel like anything that fits into those ideaologies would be purely accidental. I do think some of the ideaologies emerging with the counter-culture of the times had entered into their writing, musically and lyrically.
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« Reply #8 on: July 17, 2008, 07:35:47 PM »

When I started the whole Zen/SMiLE idea it was because all of the 66-67 circumstances & claims & the whole misunderstood SMiLE saga seemed to be adding up to only one solution; that SMiLE was, in essence, to be a Zen riddle or koan.

But I messed up because I did take it too literally & didn't allow for Brian Wilson's own personal experiences. I investigated Zen (cuz I had no idea what it was about) instead of concentrating on Bri's personal experience(s).

Basically though, the general contention is accurate.

If one reads the accounts of Brian's acid flashback & his second & third LSD trips (as laid out in his "auto-bio") one will essentially have SMiLE; that is all except for the location & events of Brian's 3rd trip.

Brian's acid flashback is interpreted, by Brian, as comparable to a Zen riddle. Brian HAD to find the solution to his personal riddle.

Typical of the sixties, it is likely that Brian revisited (contemplated) this "riddle/mystery" during his 3rd LSD trip which proved to be his profound spiritual/religious experience; the inspiration for SMiLE.

The riddle/mystery inspired the experience & SMiLE was to present essentially the same riddle/mystery VIA Brian's new Enlightened perspective to the general public.

The riddle/mystery worked for Brian. Did it work for you?



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« Reply #9 on: September 20, 2009, 07:44:31 PM »

I think Bill is pretty much spot on with his interpretation.

Well, actually, I have to clarify that.

Everyone is spot on with their interpretation of everything. What I mean in this particular instance is that old Bill might have stumbled upon the real truth of SMiLE as envisioned by Brian & Van [and their encouraging friends and associates].

The main problem for others in realizing this seems to have its source in two main and inter-related places: One, they have not used psychedelic drugs and are not personally familiar with the effects of such drugs on the mind | Two, they are unfamiliar of the true spirit of Zen and process Bill's gushy, hip writing with their associations which are branches on a tree of ignorance planted in the soil of unknowing.

So, what is Zen?

Zen as a word has its source in the Sanskrit word dhyana. Depending on who you ask or which book you're reading, dhyana means either a specific mode of the meditative process or a general descriptive name for the meditative process as a whole. Gautama the Buddha also used the word dhyana but in its Pali derivation, jhana. When it reached China it became Ch'an. When it hit Japan with Bodhidharma (or whoever brought Buddhism to Japan) it became Zen.

Zen is a state of no-mind.
What is no-mind?
When the ordinary process of thought stops without losing awareness.
Unless you've known this state, you cannot understand it.
Why? Because you haven't known what it is to not think and still be aware.
You are not the thinker.
Thought is an activity within mind like digestion is an activity within the stomach and elsewhere. When thinking stops, you still are.

Zen is the state of no-mind where the ordinarily unimpeded process of thought is either forcefully brought to a stop (as in yogic discipline) or caused to stop through other unconventional means.

Zen koans are very simple. In fact, in truth, they are so simple and obvious that they create incredible difficulty in those who don't know that which is beyond thought. They are simply ways for you to dissolve your mind into totality. Consider this: when you're walking down the street, do you think? Why? You've lived for so many years and everywhere you have walked you have missed. You were absent. You were miles away in thought. Zen is that experience of no-experience. Where everything is. It's really nothing special, just ordinary awareness when it's freed from the limiting and binding of conditioned mind.

Through meditative disciplines, or through appropriately timed unconventional and unexpected devices by masters in this art, mind stops. When you think of "I" in the sense that "I am cool" or "I am my father's son" it exists in thought alone. That "I" which we use commonly is not the real "I" which is our own self-nature as pure consciousness. The former "I" is commonly called the ego. Behind that lies the witnessing consciousness which is the basis for all other experiences, inclusive of not only external perceptions of the world of the gross senses but also the internal subjective world of mind and intellectual organs and so on.

That witnessing consciousness is experienced as a space, not a point.
Ego is an atomic point, a contraction in consciousness.

Zen seeks to awaken people to that real original face which is beyond the ephemeral world. You were once a child, now you are a big boy. You once thought one way about things, now you think in a different way. Changes, the flow of life. But where do all those experience have their life? In consciousness. That consciousness, the canvas upon which life is painted, is your original nature and this is the changeless principle that remains as one and the same throughout all change.

How does all this relate to Brian Wilson, Van Dyke Parks and SMiLE?

Well, from here you could probably go and read Bill's website and come to a better understanding. I can't summarize it so stylishly but I understand where he's coming from and what he's getting at.

I know where Bill's at.  Cool

We need not think of SMiLE as something strictly "Zen" as much as we need to think of it, rather see and hear it, as something filled with meaning (as Bill says). And he's right in the sense that THAT alone is IT. Why complicate it further? This is why SMiLE is inaccessible just like a koan to an outsider. It's so obvious that it throws you for a spin. It's there, grinning in your face, and you're looking over its shoulder.

I don't think that Brian & Van were crafting an esoteric ode to enlightenment unless enlightenment is taken to be a meaningful drug experience. Otherwise, the yogic realizations are of an entirely different nature and show drug experiences to be a few hours int he circus of the mind. But isn't that like SMiLE? It's a trip. A journey. Where? Nowhere, anywhere, everywhere.

One of the problems that arises is that people think that the "riddle" which Bill speaks of is something you have to labor over intellectually until you triumph in thought. You think you're going to come across a meaning that can be written down and given to others. That's not what the riddle means. The riddle is an invitation.

It reveals itself and conceals itself. You know how sometimes you dig the silly humor on SMiLE and Smiley Smile (and elsewhere in Brian's whole career) and sometimes you find it intolerably stupid? Just like that.

Part of the charm of SMiLE is its subtlety. It displays a wide range of influences without being gimmicky or derivative. Consider all the bands at the same time making extensive use of sitars and tamburas and how dated it feels these days. Why does it feel dated? Tamburas and such are some of the most ancient instruments and they still sound as fresh as ever in their proper context. Those bands used them to excess, shoved it in your face. "We're so cool we use Eastern instruments."

And yet, on the fade of Cabinessence Brian in a brilliant moment of arranging, perhaps his best ever, captured a more oriental sound than any musician in his time did in such a subtle and tasteful way that it doesn't sound dated at all, in fact it sounds timeless. A case could be made for the fuzz bass but even that was used tastefully by Brian. Its subtlety lies in the fact that no real "eastern" instruments were used, and yet the impression of the sound is there. Isn't it a banjo? Yet the unconventional notes it plays reminds one of oriental scales. The fuzz bass droning on the C note is just like a tambura and has the same vibrating electric sound. And some flutes, right? The electric guitar that's played on it sounds like a sarod.

I want to bring something up which might have been overlooked in Bill's article and elsewhere.

More than SMiLE being a musical Zen-statement, in the sense of egoless playfulness, being able to look in the mirror and chuckle, I think it's an attempt to capture various drug highs in music.

I don't think Brian's brain processes music like normal people does. Watch his hands during the performance of BWPS. The rolling waves in Roll Plymouth Rock, etc. When you're high on marijuana your perceptions are rarely or insignificantly if at all changed (i.e., when you see your cat it's the same cat you see while sober [your perception of the cat as it appears to you is not altered in any way]) but your internal subjective interpretation of that information may be changed significantly (like seeing a car and going into a self-induced panic thinking it's a cop who magically knows you're stoned). With this, the experience of music can be one of two things. You can hear it and be so involved in unrelated thoughts that you barely register it and it just happens on the periphery. You can also get so involved with the sound while thinking about it that while processing the sound your thought spins a web around it and will present all sorts of thoughts, conscious and unconscious, related to it. In this sense, while high you may hear the verse to Do You Like Worms and realize fully that it mimics the FEEL of bobbing back and forth or swaying on water, in a boat or something, on an ocean. It makes you grin that dopey SMiLE grin just for the fun of it.

Tripping is a different story, because your senses will actually be changed. This time, when you see the cat it is NOT the same cat you see sober or even stoned. Now it's the same cat, but your perception of it is different. Or the way it's filtered through the mind is different. Now the cat may look far away, or may seem to have different physical characteristics, or may seem to be communicating with you in a way uncommon for animals, or its behavior might seem absurdly predictable. On top of this, your thought interpretation of that altered sense information is also changed. Now that cat seems like it's far away but it also knows you're tripping feels bad for you. Next minute the cat hisses at you and you suddenly sink into despair, experiencing the full shock of that hiss. You drift in thought through different states of mind, sometimes within minutes experiencing hundreds of different states.

When you get stuck in a funk you have to bring yourself out.

FIRE is the sound of a bad trip. That's why it was so important for Brian to put it out. Perhaps he was giving a message about drug use to his listeners. What to do in the case of the bad trip. What is a psychological bummer? It's contraction, disappearing into a tunnel of your own mind. What's Zen, what is SMiLE? Dissolving all that nonsense into blissful thought-free awareness that can't be affected by thought. FIRE captures all the psychological insecurities of a bad trip. Brian's main worry about FIRE was probably that someone would hear it and it alone would send them spinning into a bad trip and leave them there, wrecked. Return is not guaranteed. The chemical will wear off but its effects on thought can be incredibly damaging or uplifting. Perhaps Brian thought he took too much responsibility into his hands there.

Eh I'm tired of writing. I might return later and clear up this post.

« Last Edit: September 20, 2009, 08:56:17 PM by nobody » Logged
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« Reply #10 on: September 20, 2009, 08:22:34 PM »

by george, i think he's got it!  Smiley

the only explanation of smile worth reading above.

beautiful post.
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« Reply #11 on: September 20, 2009, 08:53:06 PM »

by george, i think he's got it!  Smiley

the only explanation of smile worth reading above.

beautiful post.

My post? I just wanted to add to and support Bill's interpretation which seems to get swept under the rug in preference to more exoteric interpretations of the whole thing. Glad you liked it though, especially since when I made my stoned Smiley Smile rants people received them with Boos.  Cheesy
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« Reply #12 on: September 21, 2009, 04:37:52 AM »

Thanks Nobody.
Which would be the more recent esoteric SMiLE interpretations? I could be guilty as charged insofar as I have written an esoteric SMiLE essay which is still forthcoming. It is in fact ready but  I hope that one you guys reading this would volunteer to upload it for me(?)
But Tobelman is still well represented (I hope) in my online piece.  So an esoteric (even theosophical) reading does not exclude a zen-buddhistic one... That is one of the aspects I'm hoping the online essay will establish.
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« Reply #13 on: September 22, 2009, 01:51:10 PM »

Many thanks to both Bill Tobelman and to Nobody for their well thought out, positive and downright glowing opinions of the the SMiLE era!

It's a pleasure to read your posts and there is certainly plenty of evidence to back up each similar interpretation.  Do I think SMiLE was based consciously on Zen? Perhaps not.  But I do see subconscious zen in the project.  The unfinished nature is perhaps what seals the deal for me.  It may not have been the game plan for Brian or Van Dyke but when creativity is allowed free reign, anything can happen. 
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« Reply #14 on: February 13, 2011, 07:07:17 PM »

bump.

I found Tobelman's page in a random search on SMiLE yesterday. For those who haven't read it, I highly recommend it.

And Nobody's post above is a fantastic read as well.
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« Reply #15 on: February 14, 2011, 12:58:17 PM »

I've always agreed with this site since the first time I saw it, it's one of the best attempts to create a "universal theory of Brian". It was really sealed for me when I heard the Koan reference on How To Speak Hip. I think part of the belief of that era was a unity between mystic traditions, eastern religions, new age healing and lebensreform, and the psychedelic experience. I think in that article when you say "mystery full of meaning" that's exactly what it is, but you can expand that and say

mystery full of meaning=vision=dream=fragment/"feel"/"vibration"=hallucination=trip=poem..etc

People say the biggest part of psychedelic experience is "setting", this is why people had (and still do have) lava lamps. To create environments that were safe and comfortable and inviting. Brian wanted to make music that you could listen to in order to stop bad trips. That's why humor was so important, Smile is supposed to be very positive, it's inviting and funny. I think that's where that famous comment by Carl about how some unnamed mental health facility that took people who were having bad trips and played them Smiley Smiley, came from. Has that story ever been substantiated? Part of me thinks he was just fabricating it in an attempt to elucidate the Smile concept.

The Cabin Essence pun, the "Bicycle Rider" being the discoverer of LSD ("just see what you've done now"), "Do You Dig Worms?", even in the early version of Vega-Tables Van Dyke's lyric is "tripped on a cornucopia", another way of saying "I got really high". I think Brian did not explicitly come up with some of these finer psychedelic details, but I think Brian explicitly requested them (at least early on). The tradition of songs has great composers setting lyric poems by great poets. Schubert setting Goethe, Schumann setting Eichendorff, Wilson setting Parks. It was a great collaboration. Once Van Dyke was off the project Brian went more and more down the normal path, he says it straight up in the Smile documentary, "I thought people wouldn't understand where my head was at", I think he's being totally honest there, that's why lyrics got changed, that's why he became obsessed with getting the single right in 1967, he lost confidence in the idea and it got deluded down and lost its cohesion. Especially once Van Dyke Parks quit, Brian grasp on the artistic seed of Smile was lost.  

Another good bit of evidence is the Goodbye Surfing Hello God article when Brian echoes exactly the idea of Alan Watt's The Book On The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are in his explanation of Surf's Up. Brian knew what was going on with this stuff.

Also, Bill, I don't know if you still check here, but on this site, http://pages.cthome.net/tobelman/The_Out-Of-Sight_SMiLE_Site.html you have a Brian quote where he says 25 micrograms of lsd is a "potent dose" which is not true, from my understanding a potent dose of lsd is much higher, something like 500 or 1000 micrograms. Not sure that helps the validity of Brian's biography, but it's also possible Brian just didn't understand those quantities, or misspoke. It seems more likely that he had a dose of 250 or even 2,500 micrograms.
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« Reply #16 on: February 14, 2011, 05:56:23 PM »

Hi Fishmonk,

Your post is really great.

As far as the weird Brian Bio LSD micrograms & all that goes...my guess is that there weren't too many LSD experts involved with that book. That's sort of good because it kind of gives credence to Brian's 3 trip claim. He's no expert.

I tended to look at trip lengths in the bio and verify them vis a vis Brian's trip claims in the Tom Nolan article from the time.

One thing to note....outside of the Bio there has been not one mention of any specifics of his great 3rd LSD trip anywhere!!!!

My guess is that that was the reason for the great SMiLE secret in the first place!!!

The secret of SMiLE is this great religious spiritual trip----I can't tell you what it is because it's a matter of you picking up on it----here's SMiLE!



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« Reply #17 on: February 14, 2011, 06:22:36 PM »

One last thing....

Brian's "bio" says that after he had an acid flashback he remembered Loren saying that flashbacks were "comparable to Zen riddles, little mysteries full of meaning."

The point of this is to say that SMiLE is not a Zen riddle or numerous Zen riddles in any sort of proper form, but it is something thought comparable to Zen riddle(s) by Brian's most influential friend at the time and apparently Brian as well.

So the obvious jump is for Brian to think that such "mysteries full of meaning" could be used much like Zen's riddle....to bring about the enlightened state of mind.

Still, my tendency is to think this was all done organically. Brian contemplated the mystery & had a wonderful experience. SMiLE is what he contemplated....now you can possibly have a wonderful experience.
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« Reply #18 on: March 11, 2011, 05:55:16 PM »

Just want to say that the release of the SMiLE Sessions is what we've all been waiting for.

Domenic's liners will be pretty "earth bound" (gotta wink at my pal in heaven Bob Hanes for that one).

Anyway, it will be great but you may have to take bicarbonate with Van Dyke's next batch of comments.

My tendency is to think this was all done chem-organically at the planning level. Brian contemplated the mystery somewhere & had a wonderful experience. SMiLE is that mystery....now you can possibly have a wonderful experience.

One semi last thing....."nobody" made a great post on this thread about 2 years ago.

Finally, SMiLE's not Zen proper but rather a new form on that tradition. 28 smiles were handed down from the Buddha to Bodhidharma and the SMiLE album cover had 28 smiles inside the shop. It's like those guys were creating a new art form to pass on the enlightened state of mind.
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« Reply #19 on: March 11, 2011, 06:16:32 PM »

Bill,

Thanks for your thoughts.  Did you hear anything interesting from the record store source (or anyone else) that didn't make it into today's release?
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« Reply #20 on: March 11, 2011, 06:23:01 PM »

Just want to say that the release of the SMiLE Sessions is what we've all been waiting for.

Domenic's liners will be pretty "earth bound" (gotta wink at my pal in heaven Bob Hanes for that one).

Anyway, it will be great but you may have to take bicarbonate with Van Dyke's next batch of comments.

My tendency is to think this was all done chem-organically at the planning level. Brian contemplated the mystery somewhere & had a wonderful experience. SMiLE is that mystery....now you can possibly have a wonderful experience.

One semi last thing....."nobody" made a great post on this thread about 2 years ago.

Finally, SMiLE's not Zen proper but rather a new form on that tradition. 28 smiles were handed down from the Buddha to Bodhidharma and the SMiLE album cover had 28 smiles inside the shop. It's like those guys were creating a new art form to pass on the enlightened state of mind.

A genuine thank you Mr. Tobelman for your terrific writing on SMiLE.  Yours is my favorite of all the things written about this music.  I wish someone at Capitol would put your writing into a booklet to be included with the coming box set, or at least list the web address somewhere in the booklet.  I never have heard the SMiLE music the same way after reading the things you have written.
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« Reply #21 on: March 11, 2011, 07:14:36 PM »

That's the highest compliment anyone could ever have. Thanks ALL GOLDEN 74.

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« Reply #22 on: March 11, 2011, 07:44:42 PM »

Agreed.
It's kind of a shame that Dom's version has become the standard. Really this release will probably leave the all important question unanswered, what would Smile have been in 1966.
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« Reply #23 on: March 11, 2011, 08:06:11 PM »

...SMiLE's not Zen proper but rather a new form on that tradition.

I love this.  It reminds me of Ezra Pound and his stuff about "Make it new".  I really used to love reading his translations/interpretations of Chinese and Japanese poetry, and parts of his Confucious are absolutely stellar (boy, some parts sure are lunar though)!  It seems to be the thing nowadays to attack his stuff as not-exact or academic enough.  Ezra's translations may not have been exact but they are poetry and they sing!
Also, W.B. Yeats, who was a mentor and sorta buddy to Ezra Pound, wrote a treatise called A Vision which has as one of it's principle themes the idea that the cycles of life are tied to 28 day cycles and their relation to the Zodiac!  I wonder if Brian ever heard about that.  It reminds me of that quote you use from Brian about the essence of all religions.
I will come clean about one thing:  I was born and lived 34 years in Riverside, California, which is about forty-five minutes from Lake Arrowhead (and an hour from Hawthorne, Ca), so when I read your Out-Of-Sight! SMiLE site I immediately connected to it on a more personal level as I spent many an afternoon at Lake Arrowhead when I was growing up.  True story:  the last time I went was in 2007 when I took a boat tour of the lake.  The tour guide pulled up in front of a huge mansion built on the lake front and said that it had been owned by Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys!  There was a boat with California Girls written on the back that was tied to a small pier in front of the house.  I don't know if Brian ever spent any time in the house (maybe he only bought it as an investment?), but when I read your article I remembered back to that day and I thought how wonderful that Brian might have come back to a place that had been so important to him.
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Ron
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« Reply #24 on: March 11, 2011, 10:31:31 PM »

I think SMiLE was purposefully written and recorded in such a way that it could be interpreted differently by different people.  Most great art is like that.  One man sees Zen in it, another sees politics, another might see Christianity, another may see humour. 
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