Rise above

1. Rise above
About little lamas and Upstairs

2. Linda
- Meaning of name: shield made of Linden wood;
snake, keeper of secrets; pretty; beautiful
The snake that guards the holy secret

3. All stories start with a beginning. This one, though you wouldn’t think it, starts here.
Tibet.

4. Once upon a time there was a rock star. Who asked a question. “What happened
to the beauty I had inside of me?” You would think he would want an answer.
RED would have nothing to do with me, right?

5. “And I miss you, when you are not around. I’m getting ready to leave the ground.”
I came to collect on a promise. So sue me. It was a promise made in another life,
but in this life, consciously, that was what the IJssellaan was to me.
So maybe now, it is time for me to tell you my story.

6. “Johnny take a walk with your sister the moon. Let her pale light in,
to fill up your room. You have been living underground, eating from a can.
You have been running away, from what you don’t understand.”
To me, that is to Rob.

7. “Johnny take a dive with your sister in the rain. Let her talk
about the things, you can’t explain. To touch is to heal, to hurt is to
steal. If you want to kiss the sky, you better learn how to kneel.”
You really don’t get much. You get deified. It comes with the territory.
And then it is you singing it.

8. “She is the wave. She turns the tide. She sees the man inside the child.”
You sing about a person.

9. “It's alright, it's alright, it's alright. She moves in mysterious ways. It's
alright, it's alright, it's alright. She moves in mysterious ways. It's alright,
it's alright, it's alright. She moves in mysterious ways. It's alright,
it's alright, it's alright. Lift my days, light up my nights.”
You are reassuring him. To me, that is what this song is about. The divinity is just an aside.
And you sing about someone you both know. Someone you both know to be divine.

10. And that would be this one: “She’s slippy. You’re sliding down.
She’ll be there when you hit the ground.” With again
the reference to this person being divine.
My sense of humour: try and deny it.

11. He is the Dalai Lama. But there were more like him, as revered. Would you like to ask him
how many they are missing? Oh, and by the way, fully aware of the allusion: yes, I rock.
I am a tertön. A treasure finder. Probably a great one. With what they did: most likely.

12. “You bury your treasure, where it cannot be found. But
your love is like a secret, that gets passed around. “
And you just might be unlucky.

13. Slightly sarcastic: 600 million in the bank would make up for that, right?
You would think so.

14. On October 7th, 1950 Chinese troops first invaded East Tibet.

15. And in 1958 the first Chinese settlers would arrive. Right on schedule.

16. But there was something in between that went unseen.

17. “In Tibet, however, the Chinese Communists opted not to place social reform as an
immediate priority. To the contrary, from 1951 to 1959, traditional Tibetan society
with its lords and manorial estates continued to function unchanged.”
You know, history reporting leaves a lot to be desired.

18. “Certain foreign newspapers have said that we fell on Austria with brutal methods. I can only say:
even in death they cannot stop lying. I have in the course of my political struggle won much love
from my people, but when I crossed the former frontier (into Austria) there met me such a stream
of love as I have never experienced. Not as tyrants have we come, but as liberators.”
For him to get waved at may have been organised. Is all I am saying.

19. They wanted an ‘Anschluss’. So they used the same mixture of violence and,
well, “persuasion”. And what I have put in cursive in the previous slide, that was
the pretence that had to be kept up. By any truly cynical means necessary.
Diabolical.

20. The advice, with hindsight, should have been: don’t let them anywhere
near your elite. Because that was what they were after.

21. And you will find the devil on your doorstep.

22. But it is one thing that they did with the nobility of Tibet, and another
what they did in our monasteries. Not that the suffering wouldn’t
be the same. But it was a difference in approach.

23. The man who tortures you, is the one who hypnotises you.
And life goes on around you, unchanged.

24. For the most part.

25. - Like a Linden tree; soft, gentle.

26. But you are not Tibetan. And have you been gentle with me?
So here is where this story starts.