Always Further (and Furthur)

by Eric Alan
September 4th, 2010

2010 08 28 003 225x300 Always Further (and Furthur)Some twenty-odd years ago when I lived in the Bay Area—and they were very odd years—Ken Kesey brought his magic bus to Berkeley  as part of the mayoral campaign for ‘60s counterculture icon Wavy Gravy.  (The estimable Mr. Gravy—who had discovered in the ‘60s protests that police didn’t hit people in clown costumes—was campaigning with the slogan “Put a REAL clown in office,” and questioned his opponent’s experience because “he’s never even been to jail.”) Anyway, after running into Kesey at another author’s reading at Black Oak Books, some sequence of events happened that I don’t recall, despite that I’ve never taken LSD. All I clearly remember is that I ended up on Kesey’s bus, taking pictures of the intricately decorated interior—only to discover later that, for the only time in my life, I had forgotten to actually load film in my camera.

I was mortified. It bothered me for years. An opportunity and a memory like that, and such a basic bonehead move cost me the photos? I couldn’t come to peace with it until one random day when I realized I had been pranked by the enduring Merry Pranksters spirit. I laughed out loud on the street. Apparently I was supposed to be experiencing that free moment, not capturing it to keep. That was the prank’s message.  Either that, or my own projected madness had simply become consistent. Whichever. I reached tranquility with the memory either way, at last.

A recent weekend brought the memory flashing back. The Kesey family is still deeply involved in creating culture in Eugene—literally, since some of them are in the yogurt business—and Kesey’s bus was out for Eugene Celebration, the annual town party. (There have actually been two buses, and this is the second of the two. It’s the one named “Further” instead of “Furthur,” although it answers to either name. It’s the very same one I climbed on, decades previous.)

“Please don’t climb on the bus,” now says the polite label on the front bumper. And the explanation of the bus history encourages everyone to take pictures: “She likes that,” it concludes.2010 08 28 0051 300x225 Always Further (and Furthur)

So Kesey’s bus rolls on without him. There’s no longer a decision to be made about being on or off the bus, because you can’t get on. And the pictures the pranksters denied me back then I now captured with my iPhone—no film needed at all. Everything seems turned a little upside down.

Or is it? Perhaps it’s just at an opposite point on the circular cycle, as the earth turns around the sun, which turns around in the galaxy, all of which turns along the same paths of spiritual quest as always. The acid tests may be history—and I still have no interest in taking any—but other paths of inquest are equally present and urgent for those seekers whose time is now. There are always new seekers, and in the seeking there is always Further (and Furthur) to go. It’s eternal. As long as we’re the ones alive, there’s another mile to be explored, another different bus to climb on, another new way to screw up the pictures and confuse the memories. It’s all rather funny, if you look at it right. If I close my eyes and forget the film, I can hear Kesey laughing at the grand cosmic prank. I can still see the radiant glow he had, the aliveness that was somehow just a touch wilder and brighter than most.

I should keep Kesey’s glow in the present tense, for I think he’s still pranking me from beyond the grave. When I went to look at my iPhone pictures of Further, one and only one was inexplicably upside down: the photo of the bumper sign asking us not to climb on the bus. 2010 08 28 008 300x225 Always Further (and Furthur)What’s the prank this time, I wondered? I’m guessing Kesey is hinting at just what I’ve spoken: that it’s not his bus we should climb on now, but our own, with new wild colors and different laughs and quests, equally wild and free. There’s just as much to celebrate now, to protest, and to explore. Indeed, there is always Further and Furthur to travel, inside and beyond.

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Webs of Convergence

by Eric Alan
August 25th, 2010

After too long on the computer, my brain begins to act like the operating system. It freezes up, gives me error messages that make no sense, and strays off to places I had no intention of visiting. It becomes as unstable as Vista, as slow as my vintage PC.

The best remedy is to stop and seek the solace of the forests—the natural, beautiful antithesis of the artificial technical world. Or so it seems. But when I step out into the trees to regain balance, I immediately run into… the original World Wide Web.

06.3 300x200 Webs of ConvergenceSpiders are as profuse as wandering thoughts here. They each have their little web sites wherever I walk, hoping to snare the time and life of random passers-by. I have to brush web designers out of my face at every step. Their creations distract me from what I really came to experience. There may even be viruses contained in their bite. In other words, it’s exactly the same as online.

The convergence of the wild and electronic fascinates me. The more complex our designed systems become, the more organic and life-like their properties. We haven’t yet truly created artificial intelligence—and our natural intelligence is debatable—but the converging patterns confirm that everything we do remains a part of nature.

My crashing mind thus wonders: Is how the organic rises out of the technical parallel to how earthly life rose out of molten rock and other supposedly lifeless elements? Are we subconsciously repeating the steps of evolution and creation? As we continue to unleash technical genius upon the world without the ability to conceive of its results, will our systems develop truly independent life? Is this repetition too, and was all of life therefore a complete surprise to God? And if software replicates life, is it possible that humanity was designed by a committee whose primary desire was a paycheck?  That would explain a lot.

I don’t know, though. I can’t see clearly enough with all these webs in my face. And the spiders’ FAQ lists don’t answer my wild questions. Such lists rarely do.

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Hidden Stories

by Eric Alan
August 12th, 2010

I couldn’t help but notice yesterday that Abraham Lincoln was sitting on the floor of my office. Not sure how he got there, but there he was in stern, familiar profile, staring off in the distance from the face of a penny. I could tell from a distance that his face was worn, rubbed soft by many years of hands. So I picked him up and read the date: 1953. This particular incarnation of Abraham Lincoln has been making quiet journeys around the world for fifty-seven years.

2010 08 12 009 300x200 Hidden StoriesI rubbed his face for a moment, wishing I was better at massage. He did not seem inclined to tell me how he got into my office, or what his motives might be. (Even with revered politicians, it’s always best to check.) The mystery set me to wondering more deeply about the decades of his journeys, but across this world of wisdom, surveillance and databases, no one will ever have any idea where this particular penny has been. The creative game of www.wheresgeorge.com is a playful beginning with money tracking, but rudimentary. Only imagination can speculate. When the penny was new, it might’ve had enough value for significance in purchase. It might’ve helped buy Cold War essentials, then turned to being traded for a child’s candied solace. If I touched it in my own childhood, it probably helped buy baseball cards. Who knows how many times it helped balance a transaction of exacting finance? Did it ever participate in a financial crime? Was it tossed into the street, or ignored there until someone observant and frugal scooped it up? Where across the face of the planet has it reached? It’s been far more places than most people who’ve touched it, I’d wager. (Want to bet one cent?) The amount of stories irretrievably contained within that penny are beyond tally. Fifty-seven years is a long, long time, as anyone with arthritis or a bad job can tell you.

The notion of hidden stories set me to looking around my office again. I have no idea where my telephone was built, or who made it. The desk had its own life before reaching here, first as an oak tree somewhere, then in other lives before I found it on Craigslist. Many books on my shelf were first read by others I’ve never met. Every item with which we’re surrounded has stories, lives, meanings and feelings coded within that are permanently beyond reach. To avoid being sad about this, I had to surrender to the impossibility of knowing and to the beauty of mystery. I had to remember the question we were asked behind barbed wire and Defense Department security clearances when I was a young aerospace engineer: Do you have a Need to Know? It was a paranoid question then but is a wise one now. Too often our perceptions are cluttered with information that only obscures the purity of our aliveness. If I could explore every story within any penny I touch, I’d never get anything else done. The impossibility of knowing serves us as much as it hinders us.

Soothed, I looked around my office once more. Alas, I didn’t find any more money.

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The Loudness of Silence

by Eric Alan
August 5th, 2010

Growing up in the din of California suburbia, an electric buzz seemed endemic to the earth. Traffic seemed a feature as fundamental as air. Other aspects of experience were obscured. Blue skies in summer, untainted by smog? I never even considered the possibility. Moonlight as primary illumination, strong enough to hike by? It wasn’t just that I didn’t experience it. I didn’t even know it existed to experience. Sonic and physical pure open space were beyond me as a child.

Still, genetic memory is a layer far deeper than conscious knowing. It remains present in all of us, and the memories of silence and forests remained present in my youthful form, growing into a yearning that first had no exact expression. I became drawn to distant open green spaces. I longed to reach them in their distance from me, knowing in an undefined way that they were home, even if I’d never known them. I’d stare at pictures of lush groves as I would an alien landscape, yet it was like looking in a mirror. I was seeing my own roots, my home, my lands of origin. I’d simply never been there yet.

19.121 300x200 The Loudness of SilenceI’d never been to silence either, not really. It was shocking to finally turn twenty under an Oregon forest sky, blue in August, without electricity or other city to impede. (Without running water or telephones either, but that’s another story.) It was incredibly, deliciously quiet. It was a revelation that millions, perhaps billions of modern humans have yet to have.

Peaceful, however? Not necessarily. I quickly learned that external silence gave space for inner voices to play—and play loudly, they often did. In the silence, obsessive thoughts became larger and more repetitive. The scale of dreams and feelings climbed wildly. And without electricity, no recorded music or television could block them out. Yet that did not keep music from rising to a crashing din within. I spent most of that first silent summer with a small phrase of music in my head, looping endlessly, that I almost knew but could not quite recall. I could hear the guitar, the harmonies, but what was the next line? What was the song? It nearly drove me mad, until I was later back in college in California and randomly heard the answer playing across the courtyard. (“St. Elmo’s Fire” by Brian Eno, from Another Green World. How appropriate.)

Having stillness and silence nearly bring me madness instead of peace was a revelation of its own; one I saw play out in many minds years later, when I was resident artist at Wilbur Hot Springs, one of the quietest and most special places I’ve yet experienced, again without electricity or distraction. Over and over, people would arrive, thinking they had found paradise—then discover all their unheard feelings rushing up at them with unexpected intensity. It’s only in silence that you discover what the city has hidden from you, not only in the world, but within your own heart. For those able to handle the inner clamor, the result is transformative. Those buried emotions can be exhumed at last, their ghosts released from wandering through the catacombs of the soul. Eventually, true quiet does return. Eventually, tranquility that’s real settles in. Finally, a walk under that pure moonlight without the intrusion of streetlights or the torture of inner distraction.

Home Moon1 300x205 The Loudness of SilenceAre you really ready to be this alive again? That’s the question the forests seem to ask me now, as I walk within them daily, home at last and unable to distance myself from the challenges of silence. Are you able to handle the cuts of sharp inner edges? The trees dare me. Can you learn to release the thoughts which begin again as soon as they end? Only sometimes, so far.

It’s the same internally and externally. There may be fewer noises out here, but each individual one then stands out. It’s harder to ignore them. I feel like the baseball player who can more easily shut out the drone of a large crowd than a small one, because in the latter the individual heckler’s voice can slice right through. Yet I love the forest acoustics—the way an owl’s soft evening call resonates in return through the trees. I love knowing what my quietest discontents are, alongside my deepest joys. I love knowing exactly what the same trees look like, day after day after day. They stand there without motion or complaint, with a steadiness our own souls will never know. Silence? They know it better than we ever will. They practice it constantly. I admire them for it. And thirty years since I first saw them standing where they still are now, on this land, they’re far taller and stronger, and they’ve never once bragged about it, or even thought to. I can only do my imperfect best to emulate them in their silence. I can only still my mind once in awhile, and tonight if I’m lucky, I’ll do so enough for a peaceful night’s sleep. It’s beautifully dark, the moon has disappeared for the month, and instead the magic of night reveals the true stars. It’s silent, just as I will try to be, though tonight the noise of spirit is roaring inside once more.

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Hitchhikers

by Eric Alan
July 29th, 2010

Never mind storks bringing babies and other myths of creation. I have my own fictional legend about how each of us arrives here: we stick out our thumb by the Great Roadside and the planet stops to give us a ride. Where ya headin’? Around the sun? Cool. Thanks. That’ll get me there.

It’s an act of kindness when the planet allows us to hitchhike for as long as eighty, ninety, even a hundred sun circles before dropping us off again. I’m mindful that my entire life is dependent upon that benevolence, and I don’t take it for granted.  Passing along kindness to others is always the best way to deserve more, so I feel conflicted when I’m heading down the Interstate with an empty seat beside me and I pass another soul with a thumb out. I would love to offer rides in the same spirit of kindness.

But I don’t. And I don’t feel tranquil about it. I feel a vague sense of guilt and unease as I turn up the music and keep rolling. Still, the average hitchhiker I pass has broken eyes, dirty features, and a sense of hardness that scares me. I don’t feel confident that my attempt at kindness would be met with integrity. It feels like a wise risk of self-preservation to leave the latest ragged drifter at the roadside, lest I be robbed, invite unknown mental breakdowns in, or otherwise have good intention turn to nightmare. It’s fear, yes, I recognize it. I loathe it though I know that in moderation it’s a friend. Can’t live by it, but it does have a small healthy place in the spectrum of emotions.

Moth2 300x225 Hitchhikers

Photo by Bev Henrich

Every once in awhile, though, a hitchhiker slips in. There’s no way to avoid it sometimes. It happened to me recently, with one hitchhiker who had clearly never taken a shower, who had seriously unshaven legs, a wild alien look in his eyes, and absolutely no discernable communication skills. In short, he was gorgeous. He—I’m guessing even at gender here—was one of the largest and most beautiful moths I’ve ever seen, and in the middle of a hike on the land here, he was suddenly riding my pants leg and apparently quite comfortable there.

It felt magical. It didn’t feel at all like when an overly amorous dog attempts a ride on the same location. I was not only happy to give a ride in this case, I felt deeply honored. We stopped to marvel at the moth. I also felt that the long walk ahead was likely to take the moth far from home, rather than provide a valuable service. A silly feeling, really. What do I know about moth transportation and homes? I was probably just assigning human ways to an insect mind again. And it wasn’t my business, either. If a moth chooses to hitch a ride on a passing mammal, isn’t that the natural chaotic process of life and its risks? Wouldn’t I disturb the natural order by not letting it ride if it chose to?

It’s a good thing moths don’t suffer these kinds of philosophical dilemmas. If moths did philosophy, their lives would be paralyzed, like ours.

Despite our dim notions of what’s best for a moth and our right to decide that, we decided to put him on my finger so we could transfer him to a tree. He seemed equally content to be there. I stared him in the eyes for a moment—no recognition—and studied his ferociously hairy legs. Given the size of his wings, I checked the underside to make sure it didn’t say “Boeing” somewhere. I discovered that the wing spots were beautifully translucent when viewed from the underside. They looked like skylights. Now the moth was reminding me of our ceiling. I decided again that moths are better off without minds.

Anyway, I love hitchhikers. Truly I do. I love those willing to brave the adventure of the open road. I love the chance connections of life and stories told between two who will never meet again. I love that people actually dare to stop and take the ragged and broken to their next destination. They deserve their destinations as much as the rest of us do. They certainly deserve it as much as a moth. We’re all hitchhikers here, according to legend, and nothing makes me more grateful for being given another lift around the sun than a moth on my pants. Go figure.

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Mountain Mullets

by Eric Alan
July 23rd, 2010

It’s a common observation that people often look like their pets. The frequent truth of that is partially due to our instinctive draw to those who are already like us, human or not. It’s also partially due to some form of entrainment, where living in parallel begins to synch everything from attitudes to dietary habits. People begin to look like their spouses too, after awhile, for the same reasons. We begin to act like those we surround ourselves with, too, and the ways of our pets and spouses reflect how we treat them. It all reflects how we treat ourselves.

So do people also begin to look like their planet, and vice versa? Recently I found myself wondering this while pondering the ragged nature of my current haircut. You always see what you’re thinking of, so I noticed others wandering by with differing hairstyles—I use the term “style” loosely—and turned my eyes away to look at the mountains instead, thinking this would provide respite from the topic. But it didn’t. That mountain has a mullet, I realized. You know the haircut I mean: “business in the front, party in the back.” One of humanity’s dimmer ideas, right there with the Chevy Vega and potato chips in a can. Anyway, in the mountain’s case, logging has reduced it to a similar state of bad fashion. “Logging in the front, forest in the back.” I frowned and looked further across the landscape, realizing that the patchwork of cuts has reduced the entire mountain range to peaks of lopsided mullets. It’s going to take awhile to grow out. I’ll spare you the painful pictures.

We do indeed begin to look like our planet, and our planet begins to look like us. We don’t own it anymore than we own our pets, or than our spouses own us. But our interdependence makes it inevitable that we begin to resemble each other in a grand way. If we reduce our planet to an unhealthy pile of rubble, our resulting lives become unhealthy and it translates to our bodies and the look in our eyes. If we let ourselves go, it’s impossible to have the energy to properly care for our surroundings. In order to find tranquility, we have to preserve health and beauty. We have to cultivate it from within as well as around us. And on that note, I’m going to start by getting a haircut.

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SOAL and the Living Sea of Perceptions

by Eric Alan
July 11th, 2010

To release a book is to contribute one drop to the great sea of human perceptions. It may disappear in the great scheme of things, or it may catch the light and sparkle for centuries. Either way it will be small yet vital, a part of the rich human record left for others to help make sense of us later, just as it helps us now to make sense of the world around us.

In releasing Grace and Tranquility, I’m contributing another tiny drop. If I’ve been skillful in expression and if I work hard in outreach, it will assist a few of us in some small way in finding our daily tranquility, and in recalling the gifts of the natural world’s wisdom.grace tranq cover 242x300 SOAL and the Living Sea of Perceptions

A book is not self-contained, though; it’s a touchstone for the life around it as well as the ideas within it. A book is a living creature in its own right, and in its season of freshness, the heart of it is the human experience created around it. For me, the core experience is going out with the ideas, the photographs, the emotions and spirit within the book, to share them with individuals and gatherings. It’s there that the wisdom becomes both shared and internalized—a part of body experience, not just an abstract concept of mind.

The more senses involved, the deeper the shared effect will be—and so it is that I’ve long sought to create experiences that reach across media boundaries in that great sea of perception. It’s one of the great blessings of my life to have the opportunity for collaboration with a band as exceptional as Gypsy Soul, on the musical version of Grace and Tranquility and on the living events rising from it. The first of those is imminent: as part of the Southern Oregon Arts and Lecture series (SOAL), we’ll be merging live music, reading and photography in the beautiful gardens of Eden Vale Winery in the orchards near Medford on Saturday, July 17th at 7:30 p.m. We’ll share Grace and Tranquility with all in attendance, under the sky and stars. We’re honored to join a series whose other participants include Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist David Hume Kennerly, best-selling author/historian Douglas Brinkley and master Rumi translator Coleman Barks.

Of all the ones essential in creating this little pool in the living sea of perceptions—and there are many—the most essential is you, the receiver, the audience. Without audience there’s no shared experience, no electric connection of spirit, no holding of our inner expressions to the light. So we hope you’ll join us for that SOAL connection; that we together can create a little more grace and tranquility together, for one beautiful night under the open sky.

For information on SOAL and the event with Eric Alan and Gypsy Soul, visit www.jclf.org .

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Interdependence Days

by Eric Alan
July 7th, 2010

Independence is a brilliant but complicated partner. She’s gorgeous, inspiring, talented and free beyond measure.  She’s highly desirable, and can choose any lover she wants—yet she remains unattainable past a point, and true marriage with her remains elusive.

13.5 200x300 Interdependence DaysI’m in love with independence too, no matter my conflicted emotions about her complexities; and my own complex feelings came forth on the Fourth of July. As we watched spectacular fireworks, I felt tranquil but separate from the day’s original meanings. Yes, our ancestors courageously declared independence from an apparently tyrannical empire. I deeply celebrate the resulting constitutional principles. The results of that independence have been magical, yet weird and incomplete. Are we really independent from Britain now? Is it even possible in a global culture? True, King George doesn’t rule us anymore, and that’s excellent. Still we’re inextricably tied to the English through culture, economy, international law. Independent from the creative works of Sir Paul McCartney and friends? No thanks. Is Queen Elizabeth the enemy? Hardly. What about Tony Heyward and company? I know BP long ago changed its name from British Petroleum, instead becoming Brutal Polluters and suffering Bad Publicity from the Big Problem in the gulf due to Bonehead Policies—most of which stem from our own personal gasoline habits, which rule us more than any government does. The enemy is primarily within. And independence? Not from oil, Britain, consumerism or the onrushing beauty of integrated global society. All of our independence fades before our reintegration into something greater. I celebrate that, right alongside the continued vitality of this country’s constitutional principles. I’m glad we’re not independent from Britain.

I also believe independence is often mistaken for the individual right to inconsiderately do whatever the hell we please, and can too easily turn into isolation. I revisit the words of Nobel Peace Prize winner Betty Williams, on the public radio program New Dimensions: “The great fallacy of the United States is that it was built on individuality. That’s the greatest lie ever was told, because it was not. It was built on community politics. People got out in the communities and helped each other; farmers lent each other horses and tractors, and built barns. America was a much better place when she was a family, not an individual.” Same goes for the wider world. Tranquility is in interdependence, not independence, and certainly not in isolation.

I pondered this while staring at our minor league baseball program before the fireworks began—a game ostensibly between the Redcoats and Patriots, according to the playful scoreboard. (Two teams in opposition, but like the early states and Britain, actually partners in a larger shared game.) Our little battles, our illusions of difference and independence, showed themselves even in the program. In upcoming weeks, two sides as opposed as the colonial Americans and vintage British will celebrate pre-game events at the stadium: first will be a “Green Day,” a health and sustainability fair, bound to be attended by the ecologically minded, and bound to be avoided by those who will instead go to the following week’s “Logging Night,” featuring a performance by chainsaw juggler Mad Chad. But loggers are dependent upon a sustainable eco-system, and wood products made possible by the loggers have a cherished place in the homes of most of the ecologically focused. Independence? She’s an exquisite illusion again; an unattainable siren of the screen.

The Buddhist truth inevitably returns: interconnectedness is the ultimate reality. Independence, as beautiful and desirable as she may be, is as fleeting as the fireworks, and as bound to burn you close up. Best to watch and celebrate a lack of tyranny, and then walk home hand in hand, not independent, but respectfully and equally intertwined, man and woman, United States and Britain, friend and supposed opponent. Happy Interdependence Days. Might as well keep celebrating them, because they’ll never be over.

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Bear With Me

by Eric Alan
June 25th, 2010

The forest land I live on is primarily not the province of humans. Thirty of us cluster in a couple of neighborhoods, but most of the surrounding 1,200 acres is rarely touched by human feet. The trails on the upper part of the land are sculpted by deer, bear, fox, and whatever other forest denizens lurk beyond range of my senses. Unlike Ashland deer, which are no more wild than park pigeons or tourists, the forest dwellers here are not acclimated to humanity. They keep themselves scarce, mistrusting us, often with good reason, although I’ve never personally sold them faulty financial products or reneged on a treaty. So there is much more wildlife here, yet I see less of it. This gives the illusion of aloneness.

Yesterday I craved that aloneness after a hard-working and social week, so I took to the woods for a solitary evening walk, remarking in my own thoughts at the blessed tranquility of the forest. I was deep into the silence, admiring an exceptional patch of horsetails, when nearby blackberries began to thrash. I paused and waited for a deer to emerge and bound away from me like an ex-girlfriend. Instead I was startled to suddenly see a black bear, running straight towards me. Now, bears may be large and lumbering creatures, but they’re fiercely agile and can move far faster than, say, health care reform. I froze as the bear closed to within twenty-five feet, running at me at full speed, before suddenly veering off and into the forest above. It left me shaking and humbled, and in remembrance of what I wrote in Wild Grace: “The myth of nature’s boundless benevolence can be shattered in three words: things eat you.” That aloneness, that tranquility, all remembered as fragile illusion in an instant.

2010 06 24 0082 225x300 Bear With MeWhen I calmed down, I did the only sensible thing: I urinated on the spot. I marked my territory. I smiled then, relieved in more ways than one. I was glad to not be eaten by a creature who has no interest in whatever talents and observations of spirit I may contain. I remembered my tiny place in the universe, and kept on my quiet evening walk. I was glad to see the daisies in the meadow, when I got there. Daisies don’t eat you. I love them for that.

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Grace and Tranquility at Britt

by Eric Alan
June 23rd, 2010

For many years, I’ve noticed the subtle presence of natural affirmations in my life. As I wrote in the “Silent Support” chapter of Wild Grace: “I find that as a reward for creating harmony, for compassionate steps taken, for pure hard choices I’ve made that keep me along the path of the heart, the quiet affirmations offer themselves. A coincidence of birds at a moment of my own song; a falling star’s timing attuned to a good decision—it’s these kind of messages I hear as affirmations.”

Perfect weather on June 13th was another of these affirmations, the day of Gypsy Soul’s concert at the Britt Festivals, celebrating the release of our collaborative CD Grace and Tranquility. To be blessed with the best day of warmth in weeks was one of many affirmations to greet our collaboration thus far. The mere existence of the concert was an exceptional affirmation itself: to headline the opening night of the Britt season—preceding other summer performances from Jackson Browne, Jimmy Cliff, Taj Mahal, the Black Crowes and many others—is an honor we don’t take lightly, and our gratitude is boundless.

2010 06 13 004 300x225 Grace and Tranquility at Britt

Gypsy Soul at the Britt Festivals

As I stood in the wings waiting to introduce Gypsy Soul, years of other backstage Britt memories flashed through my mind: Watching Natalie Merchant do ironing shortly before showtime. Talking music and basketball with Bruce Hornsby—a man who truly, humbly loves his life—after watching him teach music to Bela Fleck in soundcheck that they never ended up performing. Wondering who that kid was at the backstage piano before another performance, and discovering it was Jamie Cullum himself, much smaller than his explosive stage energy. Feeling disturbed by the intensity of Ani DiFranco’s security team. Being completely welcomed in a warm and curious way by Lyle Lovett, a true southern gentleman in the formal way he approached personal connection after the concert. Watching Mark Knopfler disappear out the side gate in the back of a car before the house lights even came on after his last encore. Other memories flood on. So many brilliant talents have graced the Britt stage and dressing rooms; to be there is to sense all of the moments and talents at once. To become part of the tradition is to slide into the flow of a large and holy river.

The greater river is music, and to enter it gracefully is to approach it from a place of service rather than ego. That’s our goal with Grace and Tranquility—to deepen our own tranquility by bringing it to others—and the launch evening at Britt was an unforgettable start. To share our creation with nine hundred others on a perfect warm evening in Southern Oregon’s best outdoor venue was magical. The weather, music, crowd, setting, friends… all couldn’t have been better. I can only hope that in our small way, we contributed in some small way that night to others’ own daily quest for tranquility. It’s a quest that’s never over, which means that now is another perfect, affirming moment at which to begin again.

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