Cat Stevens and freedom

I'd started writing about Cat Stevens yesterday, but then had to stop, because my son was taking the break as a licence to be the laziest kid in the entire world, so I had to intervene.

I say, for the better. As they say in Russia: "The morning is wiser than the evening."

Why was I writing about Cat Stevens? I have to admit that I only recently found out that the author of such amazing songs as "Wild World", "First Cut is the Deepest", "Father and Son", etc, and Yusuf Islam are one and the same person. (Yes, I know that everyone knows this, but I grew up in the Soviet Union, where listening to any Western music, except the transcendent ones, the Beatles, was strongly discouraged and pretty much impossible)

My interest was peaked. Of course, Yusuf Islam also just recently performed at Jon Stewart's Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, which some in the media humorously dubbed "Rally to Restore the Reputation of Yusuf Islam". With that in mind, I started digging up some facts on Yusuf Islam, slightly torn between my distrust of what I perceived as a bit of a provocative stance and my admiration for his songwriting abilities and also, quite frankly, his electrifying voice. I found out that he was a Londoner, a Brit of Greek and Swedish background, and that he was a talented loner, who often sat on the rooftop of his parents' restaurant listening to the sounds of musicals being performed nearby in London's theater district. He was also very cute.

I ended up establishing so much for myself: as sensitive as the topic of Islam is in the West right now, Cat Stevens converted years ago, so this has nothing to do with trying to pick anybody's wounds or giving anyone the finger. This calmed me down.

I am all for freedom, but one of the reasons I started this blog is to look at different expressions of freedom and try to pinpoint the moment where one's freedom to do whatever one likes with one's life starts intefering with other people's freedoms to do or to be whatever they like, with all the ensuing consequences. Wow! A long sentence! Must remember not to emulate Tolstoy. (As if I could).

Being a very visual person, I think in images, so images are a big source of information for me.

What I noticed, looking at all the current images of Yusuf Islam I could find on the net including on his own website is that he looks really happy. So does his wife.

Islam's reasoning for quitting the music business twenty seven years ago supports this visual point . He says that up to his decision he had been looking for his path in life and once he found it, his search was finished and he had to simply get down to the business of living his life. Which is not the same thing as "carving out a life", "striving for a better life", "building a life", etc. He had built his life and now he wanted live it.

Living his life obviously worked out really well for him. The royalties from his songs had something to do with it, I suppose, in so far as allowing him to do a lot of charitable work, but he would have done something along those lines anyway, since charity is a fundamental part of being a Muslim.

Despite being high-profile and all, Cat Stevens' example is illuminating on the point of freedom. By quitting the life style that wasn't making him happy, he made use of the freedom to live one's life as one sees fit. The contradictory nature of this is that freedom does have limitations. And everyone is free to accept them or not. If you don't accept them, you keep on working on the project of your life. Luckily for Cat Stevens, he was able to move on a long time ago.