A Tribute to Alan Watts

11Aug09

A Tribute to Alan Watts
From the Les Project

He died in 1972, I believe. For the time, I would imagine that he was well-known in some circles, though not ‘famous famous’ – I doubt he ever made the Johnny Carson Show, if you catch my drift.

He wrote 27 books in his lifetime, and He loved to talk, and he talked mostly of philosophy, of different religions, and of his own observations on life and it’s significance. It sounds a bit boring, and perhaps some of them were if lectures aren’t your cup of tea, but he spoke with a warm and certain English accent that almost always had a hint of a smile in the voice, and he had an entertaining way of presenting his topic, veering off into small eddies of interest here and there, yet never losing his main point.

He spoke in the heyday of the drug culture, and as he was heavily into Zen, would often appear in robes and other traditional Japanese garb, which made it easy to confuse him with just another hippy philosopher running some sort of scam on the flower children of the time.

Careful listening of his lectures shows this to be a shallow take on the man and his work. One of his lectures was to a group of IBM engineers commissioned by IBM in the 1960s, and his understanding of technology, as well as it’s implications on man and culture, was top-notch and still resonates to this day.

Almost 40 years after his death, some of his word usage seems anachronistic – it was the 60s, and he was well aware of his different audiences, and would change his delivery to suit his audience. While you might hear the word ‘groovy’ in one lecture, at another, given in a church, you won’t.

He called himself a ‘metaphysical entertainer’, and in most of his talks, you can’t help but to imagine a mischievous gleam in his eye as he spoke.

I first heard of him when a northern New Jersey college radio station, WFMU, used to play half hour experts of his lectures each week. I was a stupid kid then, and as I grew up and the work-a-day world began to consume me, I forgot about Alan Watts.

20 years passed, and I began thinking again about the fellow. WFMU had stopped playing his lectures long ago, so I had to go on eBay to scrounge up creaky old cassettes of his lectures.

When I began to listen to these, I realized what an impact the fellow had on those previous 20 years. I had lifted so many of his observations, and his sense of humor regarding the seriousness of life, and his sense of absurdity.

It served me well in the real world, because if you listen beyond the anachronisms and somtimes even the content itself, there was just one message he delivered in all of his work:

Don’t take yourself too seriously.

This always allowed me to keep the drama down in sometimes stressful work situations, and even occasionally get the person who was about to blow a gasket to calm down a bit – or even chuckle.

As I described in my Ebay adventure, access to his work used to be difficult – his tapes were as scarce as hen’s teeth. But now his eldest son, Mark Watts, has put together a website where you can listen to Alan Watts, buy some lectures at very reasonable prices, donate, and even sign up for a weekly free excerpt that, after a few weeks, gives you a complete lecture.

The site is Alanwattspodcast.com and is well worth exploring.

If you don’t feel all that interested in the man after my description, I ask you only to watch this tiny movie – a short 3-4 minute excerpt from one of his lectures with an accompanying cartoon, which was put together by the creators of South Park, the snarky cartoon.

In 4 minutes you will get a taste of the kind of man Alan Watts was, and learn a lesson about life that I have kept with me over the years, and probably be delighted as well, as it is a wonderfully entertaining video.

http://freshminds.com/animation/alan_watts_life.html

Filed under: Alan Watts   |  4 Comments