Majik Dudes

New Year Prayer

2011-12-24T12:17:00.000-08:00

May this world be blessed with peace.

May we be blessed with peace.

Inhabitation

2011-10-18T12:00:00.000-07:00

Our footsteps on the trail scare up a ground squirrel.

He dashes through the hedge nettle to his burrow.

An astringent, citrus smell lingers in his wake.

What a joy it is to know the names of all the players in this simple story.

That wild mint and her distinctive smell have often been nearby,

but now we are that much closer.

The trail of inhabitation, of knowledge of place, is long and lovely.

A Song for the Sierras

2011-10-17T12:00:00.000-07:00

Sugar cones & ponderosa pines stand here. They run down the hill to the river, up another hill and along the ridge forever. More ridges with more conifers rise and fall, distant, purple, hazy.

Ravens tumble through the air in quiet play. When they quork from tree tops it echoes out until another raven in the distance takes up the call.

The trees grow straight and tall, with eccentric branches thrust out pell-mell. Many wear staghorn lichen – florescent green.

When the river swells small stones spin in place, wearing holes in the granite embankments. In summer they fill with warm, dirty water away from the flow. Eventually they dry out leaving yellow pollen rings around the smooth sloping edges.

The night is thick with chirruping bats and silent stars. A few meteors seem to fall each hour of darkness.

A fine congregation of beings gather here. Life manifests as pine martin, rainbow trout, and spotted owl: prowling endlessly on down muffled wings – as cicada, yellow jacket, and wolf spider who spins a three-dimensional dome web between low branches – as incense cedar, thimble berry, and manzanita whose seeds only germinate when touched by fire, or when cooked by the inner heat of bear’s belly.

Beings rise in a 100,000 more combinations of sunlight, soil, water, and consciousness, whose names and habits are yet unknown to me – in these mountains and foothills they do dwell. Truly, The Song of the Sierras is sung by a beautiful choir of citizens.

Neighbors

2011-10-16T18:53:00.000-07:00

Last week a colony of sea lions moved in next door. A bull and his harem of five females reside on the small rock island off shore of our cliffside home. They fish all day and fuck all night. The females bark and bark, and the male grunts, snorts, and chuckles like a self satisfied halfwit. They keep me up much of the night, since the tent walls of our yurt admit sounds in and out freely. At times it even seems quieter outside.

This is the first time in my life that I find myself so close to wilderness that I am actually annoyed by it. It is curiously comforting because the annoyance seems to me a mile-stone in a relationship with the wild growing fuller. The mists of romance have cleared, or are clearing, and though my love of sea lion, stellar jay, and adolescent crow remain unconditional, I am not so smitten as to ignore their faults, follies, and intrusive calls.

We are a family after all, a family of animals, a family of living beings, and family members often wear upon each other’s last nerve. I pray nightly for a high tide to come and put the pinnipeds off their love-play, and sometimes other members of our family join in the exhausted campaign for peace and quiet. I’ve heard an otter mewing from the kelp bed over and over, perhaps saying: “I’m trying to sleep, I’m trying to sleep!” And even a bobcat shrieking from the cliffs: “I hunt with my ears, shut up, shut up!” It seems I am not the only fussy little brother in the clan.

Within Reasons

2011-08-15T20:29:00.000-07:00

In the river small, unnamed fish gather in little shoals at either side of me. Maybe they’ve come to sup a little salt from my sweaty body, or to eat flecks of dead skin, or to enjoy some radiant heat emanating from me. Or perhaps it is for some unnamed reason that these unnamed fish assemble, some explanation far out and hard to imagine – the chemical compounds of my B.O. compose a euphoric fish drug – these fish are necromancers and have come to commune with the many ghost fish that have haunted me since their consumption – or perhaps the presence of a human being is utterly terrifying and they are forced to swim near me as punishment for previous misdeeds.

When the sun sets, bats begin aerial maneuvers over the water. Again and again they swoop down and fly around me in a hundred clockwise circles. No doubt they are feasting on the mosquitoes intent on feasting on me. The warm blood in my head is a homing beacon for the skeeters and the bats find them easily with echolocation, or so it would seem… on the other hand, perhaps human blood has healing properties according to mosquito legend, a cure for impotency or an aphrodisiac well worth the risk of bat death. Maybe the electro magnetic frequencies of my nervous system compose an attractive tune within the advanced range of bat hearing, and they circle round and round to enjoy the song, uninterested in the insects.

At nightfall I head to the Zendo for a Dharma talk attended by sixty people. We have come to hear “The Abiding Teacher” discuss things as far out and hard to imagine as: non-duality, non-attachment, and enlightenment – or perhaps it is for another reason… perhaps we gather just to gather, and acknowledge together that these lives are sometimes hard and also very simple, and that the world is both beautiful and strange.

A Bat In The Zendo

2011-08-05T14:42:00.000-07:00

A bat in the Zendo

Flaps around in circles

And chants in inaudible frequencies

He takes his meditation on the wing

And I prefer mine afoot

On some trail, dusty or damp

By the river or on the ridge

So many sutras mention mountains

Countless metaphors have described their nature

But all the wisdom regarding The Dharma

Would fit so easily in any mountain's shadow

Blacking out the pages

With its teaching

Exhale (Whaling pt. 2)

2011-05-29T11:24:00.000-07:00

First we have to climb a chain-link fence, then creep under the structure of a bath-house, tie a long rope to its foundation and repel 100 feet down a steep cliff face to the rock beach. It feels like a prison break, or a James Bond movie… if James Bond was ever racing communists to reach the rotting carcass of a grey whale.

This cinematic opening marks my 3^rd attempt to see the whale body up-close, it is Noël and Kelsey’s 2^nd try. We strategically plan our assault for low tide, and unstrategically set out during the new moon, so there is actually very little difference between high and low tides. Halfway there the ocean stops us. Kelsey and I decide to swim past a barrier of rock and wave. Noël elects to stay behind so she can go for help if we become marooned or injured. She waits in a cove with bright green, mossy walls, thick like the pelt of a cold weather creature.

I’m so focused on the waves, and avoiding being battered by them, I actually don’t register the freezing temperature of the water until I am on the next stretch of shore. Now we start a steady trot over the rocks, with no time to waste. The human sense of smell is a running joke in the animal kingdom, but despite my handicap the odor of the dead whale comes into focus well before the image. We stripped down for the swim of course, but I kept my underwear on so they could be converted into a bandanna as we approached the putrescent threshold.

We chant in Sanskrit seed-syllables, and clap as we walk closer and closer. “Sa ta na ma, sa ta na ma:” birth, life, death, and rebirth.

Other than the smell, the first thing I notice are the birds, thirty or forty gulls rest on the whale, and a turkey vulture actually sits in its mouth, tearing strips from the tongue. Turkey vultures have the most powerful olfactory sense of any animal, ever; they can pinpoint small carrion from many miles away, and from high in the air. Comparatively I might as well not have nostrils, yet every cell in my body fights to keep its distance from the carcass, and the world’s greatest smeller is literally sitting inside the whale.

Of course the difference is: what smells disgusting and dangerous to me, smells delicious and vital to the vulture… a bakery is to me, as a dead whale is to it. Eventually our presence inspires flight, and I marvel at the inherent poetry of wild cycles: that whale spent its whole life (50 or 60 years) swimming in the ocean, and now it’s flying.

The whale’s penis is draped over several large rocks, it would normally be internal, like most mammals, but apparently the muscular release or tension that accompanied death forced it out into the open. It is about the same size as my entire body. Yes indeed, this was a male whale.

Huge vertebrae stick out of the rot-widened blowhole. The internal decay is creating a lot of heat, as microorganisms do their good work, and steam billows out of the blowhole continuously, giving the impression that the whale is perpetually exhaling. And in a sense, he is, as he releases all of the minerals, molecules, and atoms that he has been holding onto, back into the world. Complete decomposition is the final breath, and the moment of absolute rebirth… when every cell is free to roam in the belly of a vulture, the primitive body of a microbe, or in particles through the air and sea.

Majik Landscape (Whaling pt. 1)

2011-05-19T21:21:00.000-07:00

We start walking on a narrow trail full of coffee berry and poison oak, and we stop short only a few yards in. The swollen innards of some small mammal lies in the middle of the path, next to them a clean picked, blood tinged skull, and a very small distance away the lower jaw. Everything else is gone. No hair, no bones, no flesh, no blood; just the lonely intestine of a recently eviscerated rabbit, and its empty skull.

It smells quite pungent, and our thoughts turn immediately to the huge whale corpse we are on our way to see. If this handful of carrion can smell so badly, surely we are in danger of asphyxiation if we can actually reach the whale.

Roughly a month ago a dead grey whale washed up on the rocky, isolated beach, a few miles south of my home. Everyday it grows tanner and tanner sitting stone still next to an old shipwreck. White water breaks nearby but misses the carcass entirely, it was deposited high on the beach during strong winds and Tsunami reinforced waves, truly, the whale body appeared dramatically right after an earthquake in Japan.

It could be a good or bad omen, these rabbit guts, either way it is remarkable. Kelsey sprinkles tobacco: a small offering. Sticky monkey flower, tall grass, lupin, and giant horsetail join us on the trail. After the tall grass and horsetail our pant legs are populated with ticks, five or ten species, some enormous. What a strange life, living on the end of a grass blade, waiting and waiting for some hot-blooded somebody to walk by. Once their dream is fulfilled, and they hitch a ride on three soft skinned apes, we just flick them off our pants in disgust. It is hard not to hate them, creepy little sanguinavores.

The trail washed out and was never rebuilt, so we repel the last forty feet. Our timing is not ideal, the tide is somewhere between high and low and will be getting higher soon. The steep wall to the east overflows with tiny mossy waterfalls, creating fresh water pools full of tadpoles, and (honest to God) a little patch of quicksand. We are forced by the encroaching ocean to climb over boulders and up crumbling rock faces past stinky cormorant nests. Two dead cormorants lie between rocks on our walk. One moldering right next to her nest, possibly not built far enough away from the pounding surf, a grim reminder that we must leave enough time for a return journey, lest we be battered in a narrow passage by the incoming tide.

This hike is full of crystals. Great bands of quartz run through the igneous rocks, so loose that big chunks can be removed by hand. Solid sulfur lies in little clumps, recently fallen out of the hillside, waiting for an alchemist’s invocation. And crystalline mineral deposits grow like a fungus on some of the boulders, tan and fleshy on the surface and then broken open in places to reveal shimmering cross-sections of pink and white.

Eventually we reach an impasse, two dangerous options: deep water and rough waves, or a steep and crumbling climb, which might not even get us over the ridge. Thwarted. The tide is really coming in now, so we’ve got to hustle. Running on slippery rocks that were dry on the approach. Occasionally we brace ourselves for potential wave death, but are mercifully spared. The salt spray in my face seems to say: “you might not be so lucky next time.” Thankfully the beach widens and the ocean is at bay, so to speak. The adrenaline drains away, and Noël spots an otter diving in the breakwater, body surfing, and smashing mollusks to smithereens on an anvil stone.

Before the long hike back we conduct spontaneous ceremony. First a little, gentle movement, improv Tai Chi, Kelsey chants at a distance. A raft of pelicans soar in from the south, they coast through the curl of a wave. I am moved to sing, exclaim in fact, to greet my soaring cousins with my power voice, my loudest and most resonant tones. A song takes shape, call and response between Noël and me, and then uncontrolled free-form shamanic verse. The tide surges in and a magic landscape is reveled, always there, just waiting for us to take a little time to tune in. The rocks and cliffs, the endless water, distant clouds, my friends and me, and all the beings: together again in a song.

Myself as Imagined

2011-04-16T00:01:00.000-07:00

At 126 years old I am very tiny. Once I rounded 111, I started to drop a few inches every year. I currently stand about 2 feet tall, but am somehow stronger than ever… and, thankfully, I remain lucid and productive. My life has become as simple as I am diminutive – I need only a meager portion of food, and a little nook of a home. Long ago I asked to meet the Gnomes, instead I have become one.

My wife (125) insists that I continue to live clean-shaven, but at 99 my spectral aura started to be plainly visible, curiously it glows brightest around the chin. I suppose non-corporeal facial hair is better than none at all.

I’ve made a record every year since I was 22, number 102 just came out on wax cylinder and collective consciousness brain stream. When The Veil began thinning I started to collaborate a little with Robbie Basho, and Harry Nilsson, somehow they’ve become even better whistlers since they stopped breathing. Our new vibrational reality has really been a boon for the creative class – there’s a lot less urgency to produce when death is no longer an obstacle… but that also might be why I’m still working on my 2^nd novel.

The Singularity came and went with a real Y2K shoulder shrug. Oh some people Borged up obviously, but I decided to remain organic sapien, choosing to put my faith in a long life through an ever-curious mind; and true to my path, I’ve never known a moment’s boredom.

You Are Free (2 old poems)

2011-04-03T12:37:00.000-07:00

I found some poems from several years ago in an old notebook. There is a certain comfort in knowing that time is passing in a spiral, but my thoughts have a clear trajectory, as these poems are as concerned with liberation and a sincere life as I am now. It is with humility that my past and present self presents them, just our little reminder, you are free!

Ironies Passing
Who does an ironic life serve?
What chance do critics have to be quiet, to say grace?
Can you grow grain ironically,
Or for that matter cook a meal?
What chance do cynics have?

Just Let Out
Shuck your husk,
Shed that old carapace.
You are not a pupating insect.
You are a wizard,
A landscape,
The ocean,
The sky!
You are a genie just let out,
Expanding beyond all horizons.
That voice that recites your story,
Is small and annoying like a mosquito.
Ditch that little vampire,
Leave it behind,
Now and forever.
Be born into color.
Your old life was not living.

A Prayer for Poison Oak

2011-03-23T14:53:00.000-07:00

Food to countless animals, poisonous to only one: man, Rhus diversiloba (Poison Oak) is the gatekeeper and guardian of the sacred wild lands of the North American West. In my region, the Central Coast, Rhus reigns supreme – climbing trees and fences, crawling low like a vine, filling drainage ditches, and rising up proudly at the borderland of every highway, road, and trail. Rhus the Cartographer draws deep lines in the sand, making property rights plain. He seems to say “this land is our land: plant land, bird and beast land, spirit land; and this land is your land: people land… for now.” Indeed Rhus is ready to take back what we leave.

First to arrive when the soil is turned over and plants are uprooted – populating old clear-cut grazing land, reclaiming it and holding fast. Rhus appears, nearly overnight, in the scarred landscape as if to say: “never again”. Poison Oak grows on the fringes of nearly every trail, and makes his presence known at the trailhead too, fair warning right from the start – the wild land is fiercely protected, it would be unwise to stray from the trail.

In the past I have suffered greatly from Poison Oak. Twice a rash has consumed my face, swelling my eyes shut. Once the tenacious oil even managed to enter my blood stream, and the rash spread over my entire body (save the palms of my hands and bottoms of my feet), my skin was so dry that it cracked and bled. Two shots of amphetamine and a month long course of steroids were needed to overcome The Oak. It is safe to say I am intimately familiar with the power of this plant. It is said that a pin-head of Rhus oil could cover the entire surface of a swimming pool, and effect everyone in it. Anthropologists have actually acquired rashes from handling Native American artifacts that sat in the ground for several hundred years – the oil can wait, Rhus is a patient sentinel.

One can hardly blame Poison Oak for taking a hard line, some of us are kind stewards of the land, but for the most part a weaponized plant community seems like a really reasonable reaction to our trampling and greedy species. Rhus keeps people out, he holds space for other beings, and he is powerful enough to do so. I honor him for his vigilance, and for his checks and balances. I have looked many times beyond a sea of red and green leaves to find, with an ache in my heart, a pristine beach, a deep swimming hole, or an unspoiled grove beyond my reach – blocked by Poison Oak. I honor Rhus still, acknowledging that it is okay, even good, that some places are out-of-bounds. By keeping people at an arms length from certain wild spaces Rhus teaches us that we don’t need to conquer, colonize, or even physically touch a beautiful place to appreciate it, commune with it, or inhabit it. In this way the Poison is very effective medicine.

So despite my own longing for untrammeled places, and painful physical history with this plant, I offer the following prayer for Poison Oak, this grace for Rhus, a veneration of his power, his medicine, and tireless work…

I venerate you Shapeshifter, in all your forms: red, golden, green, and dormant stick manifestations. I honor you Sentry at the trail mouth, Shrewd Witness from the fringes. I honor you Foot Soldier in the field – you Warrior in the high and low lands, in the wood, in the valley, on the mountain, by the river, the lake, the ocean – you Guardian, Gatekeeper, Watchman – you Squatter, Undeveloper, Restorationist, Preservationist. I honor you Offering, giving to many what was given first to you by the sun, you Merchant of Energy. I honor you Freedom Fighter, you Activist, defending the equal right of all beings to sacred lands. I give thanks to you Poison Oak, Rhus diversiloba, for the places I will never tread, for the blank spaces on the map that remain blank, for the mystery you maintain. May your magic garden be forever beautiful, and may the Leaves of Three always be. Amen, or (if you prefer) Aplants.

World Literature

2011-03-19T00:57:00.000-07:00

A muddy hoof print, coyote scat filled with bones, a blood tinged feather. The world speaks with signs.

Crooked calligraphy in a mossy branch, a Stonehenge ring of toadstools, tall thistles bending into an archway. The world speaks in symbols.

A bumblebee rolling in a flower, bull sea lions slapping fat necks in combat, a rattlesnake shedding its first skin. The world speaks in moments.

New growth on a charcoaly redwood; the full swing of the seasons; evaporation, clouds, rain, rivers, creeks, and oceans: the complete water-table. The world speaks in circles.

A wave rolling in, hail on gravel, a boulder rumbling down stream, a rockslide, thunder. Wind: through dry grass, among eucalyptus branches, whistling past a cliff face. Ice cracking, brush under foot, wingbeats. The world speaks.

-------------------------------

This World Literature is the subject of much writing and contemplation, by myself and countless others, stretching back long before a crude wall divided the world of man and the world of nature. Indeed many of us write and think about the wild because its presence in our lives is like a phantom limb, long gone, but still felt – and, of course, the stump is obvious.

The Wild is a vast physical place, and it is a habitat for mind as much as body. I see Wilderness as a knowledge system, not to be deconstructed, rather to be experienced in its completeness. Each being, thing, or event in the wild, is the wild. Every anything is a sentence in a chapter in a story, and each sentence stands alone, a complete tale told perhaps with a single syllable. In this wild library books are nested within books within words within letters. The headwaters of creation flow infinitely in all directions. The present moment is experienced in all places simultaneously. The axis of the Universe turns on every point in the Universe. Aha!

It goes without saying, the library is full of adventure and wisdom – cost of admission is careful attention, a peaceful mind, respect, and playfulness. And you have to leave human chatter at the threshold, like all libraries, it’s best to be quiet.

"Down to Earth – Reflections on Humanity in the Esalen Farm and Garden" by Noël Vietor

2011-03-15T12:03:00.000-07:00

Recently a President of an enormous corporation based in South Korea joined the Esalen Farm and Garden morning harvest as a volunteer. As I set him up to harvest kale, he said, “I know this is simple work but I imagine there must be more to it. How do you do this? How do you connect with this land and these plants?”

I picked up a handful of the garden soil and encouraged him to do the same. I gave him my rap: “After winter rain, our soil appears in high contrast between black humus resulting from forty years of tender stewardship, and glimmering shards of abalone, remnants of the native Essalen people who dwelled here up to 5,000 years ago. The Esalen land has a powerful ancestry, and farming is appropriately ancient work. We Farmers and Gardeners feel a deep sense of honor continuing this sacred practice of cultivating soil, plants and spirit.”

As a businessman in Seoul with a 4-hour daily commute, he could not remember having touched soil in decades. “This is very special for me,” he said, eyes twinkling.

I love facilitating a visitor’s reconnection of body, mind and spirit to the earth through this work. In our modern societies and cultures, we are “richer” and longer living than ever before — yet a feeling of emptiness or disconnection persists en masse. We meet our basic needs through the purchase of goods or services, curating rather than creating the material of our existence. Is it possible that the self-sufficient acts of our ancestors — growing food; weaving clothes; concocting soap; building houses — were fundamentally creative, expressive aspects of humanity, which we unknowingly ache and long for now?

As Brother David Steindl-Rast reminded me recently, “humus”, the dark decomposed material in soil, reveals its sacred power through its etymologic connection to “human”, “humor” and “humility”. This supports my belief that growing beautiful food humbly expresses my creativity, connects me to my body, the universe and the present moment, and reforms my conditioned conception of “richness”. My mentor and Farm and Garden Manager Shirley Ward regularly rejoices “We’re rich!” as hearty beets or neon pink chard emerge gloriously in the morning hours.

We plant the seeds of our wild ideas now, and as former Farm and Garden Manager Steve Beck once wrote, “look forward with the hope that arrives every spring” to see what germinates in the coming years.

Noël Vietor serves as Coordinator of the Esalen Farm and Garden – Esalen is an educational retreat center in Big Sur California

On the Long Trail with Raven & Crow

2011-03-10T15:35:00.000-08:00

I was riding my bike along 16^th Street, scowling as I passed my least favorite yoga studio in the universe. Upon turning onto Dolores I heard two ravens calling in alternating rhythm from the tall steeple of a church. Dark clouds loomed in the distance and rain began to fall. I thought to myself, a bit sadly, this is the most metal moment of my life.

Setting aside my longing for a more metal-mythic experience, I actually wish to discuss our cousins the crows and ravens, and their whole stately named family: Animalia Chordata Aves Passerformes Corvidae. Our relationship stretches back into time immemorial; in fact, the Corvidae tribe enters the fossil record about 17 million years back, we appear in our earliest form just 4 million years ago.

Crows and ravens are primarily scavengers, although I have seen a crow snatch a still squeaking mouse out of the tall grass. There is an assumption among many people (lay and scientifically minded alike) that predators possess the greatest intelligence among animals. We marvel, and rightly so, at the way a lion pride mounts its attack on a zebra herd – they carefully control and study the herd’s movement, identify the weakest member, and then isolate and overpower them.

The need to track prey, interpret signs, remain inconspicuous, and (in some species) organize hunting parties, surely requires a thinking brain. Some scavengers, however, seem to posses a cunning that far outstrips that of a predator, able, as they are, to thrive in the world with considerably less effort. “Work smarter, not harder” said Scrooge McDuck, world’s richest duck, and coincidentally a distant relative of this essay’s subjects.

Ravens will sometimes lead a wolf pack to prey, knowing that they can pick at the carcass when the dogs are done. Indeed Raven would do the same for our ancestors, leading indigenous hunters to herbivores unawares. This action may seem simple, so permit me to break it down for you: the raven finds a still living, large animal that he would like to eat, he knows he is incapable of killing it, so he sets off to locate a suitably intelligent and strong predator, or group of predators, somehow he communicates his intention and leads the way to the prey, the predators kill it for him, and he waits his turn to eat.

This behavior denotes a level of awareness present in the animal kingdom that I seldom hear dialog about, and even less so in regards to birds specifically. Raven seems to know the animals and their roles. He knows who eats whom, and where to find both. He can dream of an outcome and bring it into being, devise a plan and act upon it. He not only participates in the (eco) system, but also observes it, spectates from above, and arranges the players to his best advantage.

Crow and Raven loom quite large in the mythos of many primary cultures, often taking on the archetype of Guide, or Watchman; their ontological role reflecting their keen awareness and “real world” habits. Additionally many members of the Corvidae family possess an ability to mimic. Certain African and European raven species can repeat human words. A Norwegian acquaintance of mine had a pet raven that called him Pappa in a croaky voice (making him the most metal dude I’ve ever met, by a wide margin). The stellar jays (also Corvidae) of my watershed do pitch perfect imitations of redtailed hawks. It follows that in many majik traditions Crow is given to shape shifting. Some sorcerers are allied with these birds and can transform into crows themselves. Don Juan, Carlos Castaneda’s mentor, was a famous Crow Magician.

So, do the roles, behaviors, and abilities of beings in this world shape our myths? Or does the Subtle World of Spirit inform this Solid Place? I prefer to sit on the fence here. Not because I am afraid to commit to an opinion, but because I think it is entirely possible, even likely, that both are true. The World, spirit or otherwise, is created and discovered in the same moment. Which is to say an act of discovery is an act of creation, which is to say an act of creation is an act of discovery… now that’s a long and winding path! May Raven lead the way.

(paintings by John James Audubon)

"Mushroom Haiku" & "At the Middle" – John Cage

2011-03-08T23:11:00.000-08:00

Listen, if you will, to the gentle voice of John Cage – Rinpoche of the west, Lllama to the avante guard.

Necromancy & Fossil Fuels

2011-03-05T13:15:00.000-08:00

Long have I dwelt on the cosmic irony of our Fossil Fuel Culture. Our plant ancestors once lay at peace in their immeasurably old burial grounds, the most sacred grounds of our greatest grandparents; the ancient sustainers of the atmosphere, prodigium of consciousness.

We drag them up, wake them from their long deserved rest, and drive them like an endless zombie army. Enslave the plants of old, drink greedily of their untold power, and make them do great and menial things for our “advancement”.

We borrow from the dead, awaken our fossil family, but in our arrogance and drive, we did not take the time to learn the art of Necromancy. We disturb the spirits, but do not speak to them, and cannot listen either. It seems they may have offered some warning, perhaps a few choice words to throw our hubris into relief. The old mystics knew that you cannot live with the dead, and go on living; eventually the world of the dead becomes your world.

You were not honored Plant People, Great Ancestors, and this hard-handed lesson, is no less than we deserve. But I do ask for forgiveness, so that the Council of Beings might not all pay for our single species foolishness, and so we might have a chance to open a new age of reverence and love beyond “progress”.

"Ghost Culture" by Pete Huff

2011-02-28T21:23:00.000-08:00

I am currently hovering Lakitu style in non-citizen space above the current nonsense of Australian climate change politics and find myself understanding the grievous loss that occurs when inspirational acts become codified into profession. I'm not so dull to believe that this is anything but the natural progression of most human minds given the hoarding tendencies predisposed by the prominent economic/social structure currently popular with Earth's current dominant species.

It has been demonstrated time and time again that the movement from the spiritual to the secular is hallmarked by the centralized and exclusionary movement into the golden temple, from which authenticity is banished for fear of the light revealing the deep fissures hidden in the darkness. When existence is defined by competition inspired by fear of loss rather than inspired by cooperation inspired by faith in communal security, the natural tendency is to develop the professional niches that feed like remoras on the detritus of authenticity left over by the systematic sharks.

Leadership, in my mind, started out as a natural occurrence of (relatively) altruistic and (relatively) selfless behavior for the greater good of ones own people. Call it a modified version of survival of the fittest or whatnot - altruistic leadership was a service performed beyond the realm of personal gain.

However, we exist in an age where the competition-based systems for human existence have picked up considerable speed on the tracks and the once noble pre-mass-civilization act of leadership is now a survival/accumulation mechanism that utilizes the mires of democracy to ensure job security.

We have fully accepted the human-production model so fully that altruistic acts have become akin to the once numerous American bison. Professional politicians no longer represent the good of the tribe and this is so readily accepted that it is admitted openly without public shock. Something intended to be a mechanism of inclusiveness has become bastardized to the point that the inspiration source is indistinguishable and, if stumbled upon it is often shot or disemboweled by the media/social blades that be.

It seems to me that the systems so vulnerable to destruction by their origin authenticity are often the best at convincing those it interacts with that they must pass through its systems to reach such authenticity – our own country, with its revolutionary Constitution and politico-media soma-induced social comas, serves as an excellent example. I take great interest in the events of Egypt and Libya as they dismantle the democracy-via-garbage-disposal systems in place of self-determination. Let’s hope that revolution-back-to-the-source cannot be trademarked and marketed by Coke.

So what of it all? It isn’t just politicians. Our mother culture is so connected that the loss of the spiritual in the secular is common, with efforts to shake up the system (art, music, environmental activism, etc) are quickly co-opted by competitive structures that they ironically turned into Borg without awareness. And in that transition, the flame burns lower and recognition of the authentic is more difficult. We have become a ghost culture that has eaten its soul to fill its belly. The taboos have been destroyed, the rituals have been marginalized, and the peace has become packaged.

But I believe the recognition of the authentic and the ancestral is undeniable. This story of existence is just that – a veil that holds no power beyond its ability to obscure and sow doubt. The power of an individual expressing authentically without hope for gain beyond personal fulfillment is bewildering to the system. The response comes in the form of ignoring the act in hope that its walls will withstand any losses. This quickly moves to the acquirement-model that attempts to trade such an individual shiny things for the power of their expression. If no ground is gained, social ostracism or annihilation assumes priority, as the survival of the system is paramount in light of penetrating authenticity.

It is the realization of what has been all along: a hollow dream induced by those who are so inextricably dependent upon a consumptive system. Power lies in the realization of the individual and the expression of the pure without hope for hoarder gain. Those shaking off the mantle and rejecting the need to pass through the system to reach the enlightenment, a fundamentally pure act, are mocked by those within the system. Such is the case with all that live outside of a system in which mockery and ostracism are the best ways for any individual in the system to avoid the pangs of introspection that come when an alternative sheds light on ones own choices. It is a lofty goal to slough-off and I hope that one day I can touch its edges.

(written & submitted by Pete Huff, 28/II/2011)

"Don't go to SXSW®" follow-up (short on poetry, long on wind)

2011-02-28T16:58:00.000-08:00

I am honored by the many thoughtful comments that last week's article "Songs as Gifts Simultaneously Received and Given (Don't go to SXSW®)" has inspired. My first piece of was a more poetic, general, and less narrative work, but a few readers seem to be looking for a more specific follow-up, so I am happy to oblige...

Some have missed a key distinction, which I may not have made quite clear, I am not criticizing musicians who play at SXSW® or other inadequate venues or festivals, I am criticizing the festival. However, if musicians refused to engage with these exploitative and mediocre systems, the festivals/venues would disappear or change. Hence the call to boycott, and my strong language: “don’t go”.

I have personally felt very unhappy performing in many loveless commercial spaces, bars in particular, and eventually came to the realization that it is not necessary. Creative practice (a.k.a. art) is not the same as entertainment, sometimes they are interchangeable, but not as a rule. Spaces that want to sell something (other than the experience of the music itself) are interested in entertainment as a method of bringing people into the space to sell to them.

So are you revealing truth and beauty or are you selling drinks? Of course it is possible to do both at the same time, but why should you? Why should we cow down to a parasitic and mediocre set of parameters? And who’s pockets are we padding, and what exploitations are we propping up? Most musicians are underpaid or not paid at all for their hard work. In my experience it is the less commercial venues (art galleries, houses, community spaces, unofficial clubs, etc.) that pay artists a reasonable percentage of the money they bring in.

SXSW®'s clear commercial agenda is certainly enough to throw up a red flag or two. This little gem of a statement on there website kind of says it all: "With numerous avenues for exposure to over 36,000 key industry representatives, SXSW® 2011 is the most valuable addition to any marketing plan." Their key sponsors are… Chevy, Miller Lite, AOL, Pepsi & Monster Energy Drink… to my mind this kind of multi-national corporate underwriting is an obvious problem that doesn’t require overt analysis. May it also be noted that despite the distasteful sponsorship there is a $25 fee for all bands to apply to the festival. Tens of thousands of bands apply.

Unfortunately there are a lot of non-creative middle-men that profit while artists’ starve, and grasp in the dark for recognition. SXSW® uses a particularly shabby intermediary called sonicbids(dot)com that charges artists a monthly fee to set up a profile, and then collects additional money for submissions to venues and festivals. It is even more unfortunate that musicians are led to believe it is necessary to engage with similar parasites in order to share their tunes. Further more, these middle-men and bad venues contribute to a setting of competition that benefits them and not us. Bands will pay to be considered “legitimate”, and step over each other to play for someone else’s profit.

We sometimes pay a much higher price when we attempt to engage with the sacred in a place where very few, if any, could succeed. We may loose our way back to the ecstatic source, we may eventually no longer hear the songs, and we may give up the quest entirely.

So, a practical summary… Musicians who are interested in making a better artistic community/habitat ought to… demand payment if money changes hands anywhere in a venue, seek out spaces that care about music for music’s sake, make your own way as much as possible, and support each other! This is not cynacism, cynacism implies resignation, I believe that a better way is out there, I have tasted it, and I want more.

Songs as Gifts Simultaneously Received and Given (Don't go to SXSW®)

2011-02-23T10:59:00.000-08:00

Dear musicians... Let me be plain, don't go to SXSW®. Mass consumer spectacle isn't very musical. Artists climbing over each other to get 50 shows so they can be "discovered" doesn't have much to do with truth or beauty. Stay home and record a song. Go into the mountains, the desert, to the top of a building, and receive one. Play a show in the town right next to yours that you've never actually been to.

Say no to vampires. So no to mediocrity. You make music and there is no one who doesn’t love music, this makes you one of the most powerful people in the world. Tastes may vary widely, but music is a universal good. You create the most important human export.

The Ainu (Japan’s native population) believe that songs are Man’s gift back to the Universe. As the top of the food chain we do very little to give back, so the Ainu played epic music at every meal and many times throughout each day to honor the beings, and land that sustained their lives. When they played the spirits gathered to drink the song, to bathe in the music.

Every primary culture I have ever studied believed that songs were received, sometimes smuggled back from another plane, usually the world of spirits. Or given to them from some non-physical beings, or some ineffable place. These songs were generally semi-secret songs that gave the singer power and specialized knowledge. So a song is a gift that is simultaneously given and received. That sounds right to me.

Let’s take a few (thousand) steps back and return to the sacred. Not the kind of sacred that is static, reserved or dogmatic. The sacred that is ecstatic, powerful, creative/destructive, funny, wise, overwhelming, honest, entheogenic (God manifesting), hallucinogenic (vision manifesting), and/or psychedelic (mind manifesting). Don’t fill your head or environment with simulacra songs, turn off the car radio, try to tune out the music in the market. And stop giving your songs to parasites. Play only where creation is welcome, where the sacred particles of music can do their good work, swirl for the spirits, and dance for our own.

Goodnight Majik (nature journal 20/II/11)

2011-02-21T22:10:00.000-08:00

From the trail we clamber down to the beach. Garnet tinged, purple sand flows through the normal white stuff. Violet brush strokes swirl around green jade look-a-like rocks. Not an average beach.

Noël finds a perfect little abalone shell on the sand, slaps it in my hand and calls it my paycheck. A big rock shelf means radical tidepools, some deep and wide enough to paddle around in. Vast hermit crab and anemone civilizations have thrived in these shallows for centuries, and yet no monuments or temples have been erected, at least none that I can discern. Maybe the temples are in the shells, or maybe the whole place is a temple.

A seaweed-filled ravine cuts right down the middle of the rock jetty. It seems just the right kind of place to find another abalone shell, and lo-and-behold there’s a great big one a few feet away. When I tell Noël that I saw the shell before I actually saw it, she says matter-of-factly “why does that surprise you at this point?” Sometimes I forget about the world’s majik until it is dropped right in my lap.

Around the bend we find a tiny cave. We sing inside it, playing with the tones, feeling out which ones resonate in the space. The song brings on slow languid movement, and rock on rock drumming. Every sound and sign just right for the moment. Good shamanism, which is to say: good playful and loving engagement with the spirit of that place, with our spirits in that place. A fine gesture of cave/man love.

We’re all smiles when we get out, I hope the cave smiles too. I stare at the sky and it subtly flashes, kind of a “yes” flash, affirmative pulse from the sunset. Behind us a weird mark is set in the sky. A vertical cloud line, like the vapor trail from a plane, but upright, like a rocket’s trail. An optical illusion, a meteor, a spaceship? The trail/cloud is gone in a few minutes, evidence wiped clean by the wind. Aliens, meteors or men: the Sky is indifferent, and, come to think of it, so am I. Cavesongs seem so much more important.

The trail fills up with scattering bunnies for the hike back. Polyphonic owl hoots sound majikally from a eucalyptus grove, a three-tone hoot that boggles my mind. My first thought is of a giant spectral owl. Eventually the mystery unravels. There are really three owls hooting in different pitches. Somehow they managed to call out in perfect unison, giving the impression of a supernatural hoot. Amazingly this happened twice in a row before the band broke up.

A skunk waddles at full speed in front of us, zigzagging – evasive tactics. He leaves just a splash of mercaptan (skunk spray) behind him, just in case there was any confusion. “Don’t know if you noticed the stripes chums… can’t be too careful.”

A fox dashes across the highway as we drive home, barely more than a flash in the headlights. Our last visitation from the twilight kingdom. Goodnight Majik.

Belated Honorings

2011-02-18T16:46:00.000-08:00

Rainbow, the dog, is attracted to the site long before we are. I only notice it because he does. A ring of fur, evidence of a deeply penetrating event. Speculation begins at once. A rabbit? A fox? Some manner of weasel? Couldn’t be a house cat, not this far up the trail. Allan pokes a bendy stick into the ground in the center of the ring. “Well whatever you were, we honor you.” Something we clearly should have done first.

Imagine is we stopped at a fatal car accident and acted like this. “Those look like a banker’s shoes to me. Yeah, but look at that ink stain on his shirt pocket, I think he was an English teacher. Well whatever you did, may God love and keep you.”

From that place on that trail one bodily life was extended and one bodily life ended. Maybe that’s all we need to know. It’s certainly enough information for reverence.

In the end we decided it was probably a bobcat.

My Real Costume is Underneath

2011-02-11T09:22:00.000-08:00

Sent to me by my friend Em, by way of several other blogs... clearly working hard for the collective good of the internet.

Father in Law does not like connotation of "Dude"

2011-02-09T22:12:00.000-08:00

What follows is a letter from my girlfriend's dad, the title was his original subject line... he makes a good case, with some very nice writing.

"Hey Fletcher, checked out your blog via this post and it is really intelligent and interesting. As Noel will tell you, I am hypercritical, but always with a positive end in site. I hope you won't take this criticism personally, but for me connotations that follow the word "dude" are not positive. From Wikipedia: One of the earliest books to use the word was The Home and Farm Manual, written by Jonathan Periam in 1883. In that work, Periam used the term "dude" several times to denote an ill-bred and ignorant, but ostentatious, man from the city. The rest of the Wiki article is informative also. Of course the most common understanding of the term is of a "dandy", an effeminate male who is consumed with fashion and clothing. But the most damaging to your blog image (from my perspective) is the dumb stoner connotation. The use of the J in Magic doesn't help to dispel this. I know you are intelligent and your esoteric/80's vision of the word probably trumps my historical one, with most of your blog followers not even thinking about it twice. - Just an old man ranting about the vagaries of youth." – Dad Dude (Noel Vietor)

"Big Time"

2011-02-09T14:13:00.000-08:00

I mark my hands and face with charcoal, picked up from a burnt out redwood. – Signs for the spirits, silly and serious: Paleolithic clown priest. – How many can fit in a tiny cave? – Ah, but the real sage is the Cave. – The only Immortals that lived in the mountains were the Mountains.

All of this is little talk in some big time. – Sometime, like stone time. – Sometime like tectonic plate time, ridges and canyons time, endless caverns time. – Here in stone time my memories are like fallen fruit. – Enjoyed by some beings in a small way, and then… – Well where is the fruit? – In the bird or beetle? In the mushroom or mold? In the soil?

Microscopic soil life is vast and numberless. – The enlightened realms of the Buddha are vast and numberless. – That seems like quite enough for now.

Another Gift From the Amazon

2011-02-08T19:28:00.000-08:00

The richness of the Amazon cannot be overstated... Millions of species interpenetrating, the densest and most diverse ecosystem in the world. Ancient civilizations of staggering technological and cosmological advancement. An estimated 3,000 unique languages over the many centuries. Plants that open the soul (Ayahuasca). Plants that cure cancer (maybe). And also this joyful albino man and his merry band playing some genuinely silly music, guaranteed to put a twinkle in your eye! Magicians were usually hermits, and his name's Hermeto.

Tidepooling (nature journal 12/I/11)

2011-01-18T14:48:00.001-08:00

When I go to the water it happens to be low tide, what wonder! I walk my favorite stretch of pools and beach: where cormorants dip, harbor seals prostrate on rocks, and anemones abound. When the water is at its most withdrawn, when the tides inhale deeply, big pools are formed way out between rocks usually invisible. They are little oceans of their own, sand bottomed, clear and calm. Sea grass sways softly.

A barely dead gumboot chiton lies belly/foot up in a small pool, and hermit crabs diligently dine there, she is meal and table and the gumboot will disappear by tiny clawfull. Ah detrivores, how I admire the scavengers of this (and every) ecosystem. They live like kings and do no harm. I wouldn’t be surprised to find “waste not, want not” hanging cross-stitched on the inside of a crab shell, or behind a bark beetle’s wing.

Under a stone above the water line there is a bright purple rock crab, about the size of my fist. Sneaking my hand around his claws I actually manage to pick him up. Black eyes sit on opposite sides of his body, he seems to grimace, even though he lacks a face, he reminds me somehow of an old sorcerer, maybe he is. I must admit I want to eat him. I get an ancient hungry feeling often at the tide pools; they are teaming with slow moving, high calorie life, that is nearly alledible raw… Today I nearly sucked a limpet right out of its shell.

There are a lot of stranded creatures under the rocks above the water, and when I move I can hear them scuttle to find a safer place, totally unseen. I am picking up trash, but thinking of abalone shells, it is my custom to ask my totem (the sea otter) for a shell or two for my home alter, she usually obliges.

Next to a tin-can-top there is a shiny fragment of abalone, quite lovely, but just a little piece, so I toss it in the water. The water ripples out, and just below the rings there is a beautiful and big abalone the size of my whole hand, sitting plain as day on the sand. Of course it had been cracked by an otter, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. After I scoop it up I find another iridescent shell to my left wedged between two rocks, smaller, but whole. Then in a pool to my right I see another abalone, shiny side down, with a bright turquoise outer shell, which is completely new to me, I have only ever known them to be red or black. Overjoyed by the trinity I try to collect this Holy Ghost, but when I get my hand around it’s shell the abalone sucks down tight to the rock, it is alive, and won’t budge for anything! I can almost feel that playful otter swim up behind me and say “you can’t have it all at once.” So that turquoise abalone sits on its own alter, a future sacrifice, like everyone else.

"For All" by Gary Snyder

2011-01-18T14:21:00.000-08:00

Ah to be alive

on a mid-September morn

fording a stream

barefoot, pants rolled up,

holding boots, pack on,

sunshine, ice in the shallows,

northern rockies.

Rustle and shimmer of icy creek waters

stones turn underfoot, small and hard as toes

cold nose dripping

singing inside

creek music, heart music,

smell of sun on gravel.

I pledge allegiance

I pledge allegiance to the soil

of Turtle Island,

and to the beings who thereon dwell

one ecosystem

in diversity

under the sun

With joyful interpenetration for all.

True Resumés - give up the charade, you're so much more

2011-01-13T16:29:00.000-08:00

For me there is no greater repository of collective deception than the resumé. Of course there is the obvious embellishment of “accomplishments”, the stretching of employment times to fill in gaps, and often there is outright lying about employment, skills, and education. But there is another level of deception too. The simple act of submitting to this formulaic evaluation of self, displaying data about oneself that fits someone else’s standards, rather than your own… this is the greater deception.

To get hyperbolic about it just for a second… creating a resumé can diminish the truth of the dynamic and exceptional nature of your existence and experience. These documents need a thorough cleansing, and it’s gonna take a lot of sage!

So I have made my own “soul resume” my “native-self resume” which is, after all, limited, but infinitely more expansive than the humdrum. Truth be told, thinking about things, events, and abilities I feel joyfully connected to actually made me feel great! So I recommend you give it a try. Make a resumé for “things” you are really proud of, stuff that feels real, meaningful, and wonderful. We can shuck the husk of a severely stunted goal/production oriented world-view. Burn your old resumé and let this phoenix rise from the ashes.

My new resume is here (as a PDF) and reconstructed in text below. Anyone hiring?

[Follow up assignment: Send your new resumé to an organization/person/company you’ve always wanted to work for but don’t feel qualified to. OR send it to the CEO of a terrible company, just for fun.]

_____________________________________

FLETCHER TUM TUCKER

address: Dodge Mini Van, Big Sur, CA ||| phone: limited ||| email: fletcher@birdbysnow.com

SPIRIT ANIMAL(S): Sea Otter / Pine Martin / Bobcat /

California Condor / Red-tailed Hawk / Brown Pelican

MINERAL: Petrified Wood / Amber / Obsidian

SHELL: Abalone

ALLY: Mushroom / Ayahuasca

NONCORPOREAL FAMILIAR: Gnome

MYTHIC HERO: Robin Hood / Merlin

SUN SIGN: Aires

MOON SIGN: Gemini

RISING SIGN: Leo

NATIVE GREETING: Hug / High-five

EDUCATION

27 years drawing breath – 22 years wilderness contemplation – 10 years serious consciousness contemplation – 8 years traditional Japanese Jujitsu practice/training – 9 years mature art practice – 6 years of musical engagement & song questing – 6 years of tutelage with my Allies – 6 years of world travel

1996 Achieve 1^st degree black belt in Jujitsu – Seibukan Dojo – Monterey, CA
2005 Graduate from UCSC, high honors – Santa Cruz, CA
2005-2011 Seven musical tours through eleven countries – US & Europe
2007 Meeting with Ayahuasca – Oslo, Norway
2008 Discover the works of Gary Snyder – Pacific Grove, CA
2010 Natural Building Intensive – Boonville, CA

APPLICABLE SKILLS

Pine-needle basketry
Reading
Writing
Thinking
Waiting
Web design
Adobe Photoshop
Information stores focusing on: zoology & life sciences, music, art history, pop culture, eastern thought/esoterica, poetry, jokes
Tide pooling / finding abalone shells
Building fires
Recording, arranging, designing & producing records
Advanced knowledge of: guitar, jews harps, dulcimer, looping pedal
Cursory knowledge of: banjo, piano, percussion, over-tone singing
Oil painting, printmaking (intaglio, block, stone lithography), drawing, photography
Regional botanical & geologic knowledge
Building structures with earthen materials
Silly noise expert

references furnished upon request

Yugen Movie VIII (anti-viral video)

2010-12-30T19:33:00.000-08:00

Bird Miracle / Wild Wizards

2010-12-29T11:54:00.000-08:00

From the cliffs I watched a white egret stand in the tide-pools below, head down, watching, waiting. Patient seems a paltry word for this bird, but it was the virtue she bespoke to me. This is how she makes a living, fills her belly, by casting no shadow, by attracting minimal attention, by standing still & observing.

I am not sure what term of venery (or plural noun) is correct for egrets (I believe it is a siege of herons) but why not a patience of egrets, or perhaps a stillness, or even better: a meditation…

I have even seen them seem to defy the physical laws, like some Tantric demigod, standing on the ocean’s surface on spindly stilts, actually supported by the tangled top of a kelp forest. Again standing perfectly still, waiting for a careless sea creature to flit close to the surface.

As far as I know no mantra is uttered, no esoteric forces summoned, the egret simply stands on the majik of the world itself, which, of course, she co-creates. Giant gas filled algae, hollow avian bones, and millions of years of interpenetration offer up this majik trick. The salt water, the kelp & the sunlight that it reaches toward, the bird & its brood, and the crab or fish it hopes to catch… they cast the spell that makes an egret walk on water; they are the wild wizards.

Ascension Sessions - mystic, wild, live videos from Bird By Snow (IFC exclusive premiere)

2010-11-08T11:12:00.000-08:00

Here is a link to the IFC premiere page... and here are the videos, in their words "Grab hold of your chakras we're heading into the spirit world."

October 16th 2010, Fletcher Tucker, Spencer Owen, Rob Little, and Noël Vietor, hike to a remote and mystic oak grove three miles above the Pacific Ocean in Big Sur, California. Here Fletcher and Noël build a hanging sculpture which is to become the focal point of a live performance by Bird By Snow (Fletcher, Spencer, Rob). Fog fills the sacred space and erases the already distant outside world. Video shot by Noël on a Japanese toy camera. Concept by Fletcher & Noël. Editing by Fletcher. Ceramic chimes (at the bottom of the sculpture) made by Stephen Tucker. Costumes dyed by Noël, using California native plants harvested from the very trail that leads to this performance site.

Samhain (Halloween) an Early Thanksgiving

2010-10-29T16:22:00.000-07:00

Halloween, was once known as Samhain, and was celebrated on October 31st by the ancient (shamanic) Celts. On the 31st the Celts burned animal bones, carved gourds like skulls, and hung skeletons upon their windows… young men even dressed as though dead and painted their faces black.

The Celts did all this because Samhain was the day when the world of the living overlapped with the world of the dead. And through these symbols and rituals the dead were free to move among the living. It was actually a generous day, a day where we welcomed the dead back into this beautiful and growing world.

So between trick-or-treaters this year, consider all those dead people (your/our ancestors) who have brought you forward. Give thanks! And hold for a moment in your mind the wondrous fact that is this world (which is a closed circuit) you are breathing the same air that was in your ancestor's lungs, you are drinking the water that passed through them too (not as gross as it sounds), and your body is made of molecules that have changed hands billions upon billions of times, on this planet and before that reaching out into the primordial recesses of space!

The first, long vanished, ancient stars are our earliest known ancestors, and countless eons down the line, the amoeba, the lunged fish, the tool wielding apes, our father's father's father, our mother's mother's mother... all standing behind us today. Happy Halloween!

Majik Basket pt. 2

2010-10-29T11:57:00.000-07:00

I've made another pine-needle basket. Possibly the world's tiniest? Wild-crafted with Monterey Pine-needles, Autumn 2010. Displayed here with a Sugar Cone Pine-cone (the largest pine-cone in the world).

(click the image to enlarge the image)

Kelp Portal

2010-10-13T18:18:00.000-07:00

Wild-crafted seaweed arch that I made in Bolinas, California. (click the image for a larger view)

Majik Basket

2010-09-10T18:36:00.000-07:00

I make pine-needle baskets now. This is PNB-00000001... Wild-crafted with Ponderosa, Jeffry, and Sugar-Cone needles from/in the Sierra-Nevada mountains of California. Summer 2010

high-res image on my Flikr page

Michael Moschen: Majik Balls (anti-viral videos)

2010-08-31T10:55:00.000-07:00

Were we to send a spaceship off into space populated with select individuals to represent aspects of our potential as a species... I'd pick this dude to show the peak of our hand-eye coordination. And were we to find some aliens he could totally trip them out with his majik balls.

DISCLAIMER: The second video was made in an irony proof studio, so just accept it as amazing, and ignore the flesh colored Speedo.

Ancient Friendship (camping journal 26/VIII/10)

2010-08-31T09:31:00.000-07:00

My brother and I sit and watch the fire late into the night. Put a stick in and watch the smoke unfurl, wrap around our fingers, float to the moon. The wood sings, clicks, crackles, squeals, and pings. We like the song too.

Mostly we sit quietly but eventually we pontificate on the pleasures of fire… the feeling of safety and warmth… the endless variations of smoke, flame, ember, and sound… and our ancient friendship.

I am reminded of something my friend said a few months ago, he said “there’s a reason an orange tastes sweet to me, and a reason I can look at a waterfall for hours, it’s because we grew up together.” My brother agreed it was a beautiful way of saying it. So the world is relationships, some old, some newer. Our relationship with fire certainly qualifies as ancient.

An almost full moon, high in the early morning, lights up our camp completely. Mars is closer this night to me and the planet than it has been since man named it and began to follow its movements. “Close” but still very very far, just a big white spot. Despite the distance Mars and I grew up together too.

Though Mar’s song is subtle and his dance much slower than the fire, people have watched and listened. Even though I must seem absurdly fast, tiny, and brief, Mars sees me too. Old friends talking again.

Birthdays! Robbie Basho 70 / Majik Dudes 1

2010-08-31T08:23:00.000-07:00

Today would have been the 70^th birthday of Robbie Basho, composer, guitarist, pianist, singer, sage. In memoriam I wrote this piece about him last year, and am re-posting it, with some of my favorite songs in toe.

This was also the FIRST post ever on Majik Dudes, in 2009, so today is our birthday too!

“Basho as Imagined” by Fletcher Tucker

7 feet tall and 29 pounds, Robbie Basho was created on August 31^st 1940. His enormous stature was attributed (by many) to his father, the Mountain, conversely his feathery weight was bestowed upon him by his mother, Fresh Fallen Snow. With hands as broad as an alpine stream during spring thaw, Basho was made to play the 12-string guitar… some find it a daunting instrument… the breadth of its neck, and the delicate placement of the strings challenge most, but nourished Basho. Channeling old and modern magic through his instrument Basho set out to create a new form of music, the American Raga. As gifted as any beast can be with an instrument, or composition, he was equally gifted as a singer. Basho had a voice like an old Viking king and a range of highest vibratos and rumbling, lamenting moans; his remarkable vocal power was no doubt a bi-product of lungs comparably sized to that of a bull moose. His lyrics were a refined visionary beam, casting light on mythos and mystery from the ancient America, mystic Persia, ascetic Hindu, and feudal Japan. Warrior-artist Basho, armed with voice, words, wood (body), steel (strings), and sight, is one of our greatest illuminators… little known shaman of America the Beautiful… bringer of song from beyond the veil.

Songs: "Green River Suite" from Visions of the Country --- "Wounded Knee Soliloquy" from The Voice of the Eagle --- "Khalil Gibran" from Zarthus

Big Sur Grace

2010-06-14T11:09:00.000-07:00

We venerate… the bearded oak, and his beard: Spanish moss – granite and his gold and green lichen – Monterey pine and her needles and cones – the cypress bending low – the redwood standing tall, burnt out in the middle – pale faced otters wrapped in kelp – black sided dolphins – whale spouts and flukes – water: salty and borderless – water: fresh and endless – cougar, black bear, and ring-tale: seldom seen – fox, coyote, and bobcat: sometimes seen – raccoon, rabbit, and ground squirrel: omnipresent – the alarming stellar jay – the circling turkey vultures – the flash of hawks: red-tailed and coopers – the gulp of the pelican, cormorant, and gull – the swoop of the falcon, the kestrel, the swallow, the bat – the dashing lizard – the scrabbling snake – sweet smelling rosemary, yarrow, and sage – forbidding black-berry bramble and mighty poison oak – waves hidden in fogbanks – trees toppled in high winds – dry grass and poppies – the crow's cry – the raven's wing beat – the moth, monarch, stinkbug, and mosquito eater – the foothills that walk – the condor's return – the pollen and seeds – the eroding stones – the mildew, mushrooms, and mold – the leaf litter – the washed out and washed up – the buzzing, the chirping, the croaking – the songs that surround us – the collective breath. Big Sur, amen.

Trek into us (nature journal VI/6/2010-VI/7/2010)

2010-06-08T12:48:00.000-07:00

Driving south-east from Big Sur through seemingly endless Old California; hills of parched grasses and ancient Oak groves. We pass through a military base where soldiers play war in the heat; 70 degrees at the coast, 99 in the hills. An old tank sits in the distance, crow perched on the turret.

Granite and Limestone formations appear suddenly in striking variety, some piled high like cave filled monuments, others half buried and striated, looking like an alien spacecraft that crash landed 20 million years ago and calcified.

We’ve heard tale of swimming holes and wild rivers here, but there are no signs or maps. Gallant and drunk-driving rednecks show us the way, intent on a swim themselves in a pool called “The Hippy Hole”.

We drive on toward a trailhead in search of “Fish Camp”, or possibly a fabled place beyond full of fossils. Peeing next to the car, a lizard runs down a tree to my right and positions himself directly in my urine stream, I shift, and he dashes right back into my urine. New species discovered: Piss Lizard.

Packs shouldered we march clumsily along a narrow path carved into the steep hillside. Poison Oak, Foxtails, Yarrow, Sticky Monkey Flowers, and huge Succulents watch us hike. Bellow us the Manzanita is burnt out, charcoaled branches with Morning Glory vines twisting up their brittle frames. The Morning Glory seems to rise lovingly, consoling the Manzanita with an embrace and flowers for their gravesite. Unknown yellow flowers are the most abundant; because of them the mountain in the distance is as yellow as a pollen pile.

Winding down to the river we loose the trail completely, it may indeed have eroded well enough away. We make camp on a sandy plot. Later that night we see a Bumblebee walking in the dark in the sand, caught in our headlamp light, “go to bed Bumble!”

Our fire is fed by loose wood stuck in the branches and cricks of nearby trees, deposited there by the river at its fullest, or possibly in a small flood. Our bellies are fed with canned fish, ironically packed in. The Mosquitos are fed by Noël. My imagination is fed by the splashing of the river over the rocks… I swear I can hear something wading through the water. Evidence in the morning proves me less of a fool, I find deep hoof-prints in a nearby bank leading into the water and not out.

Two spiders perform a shadow show on our tent roof in the AM light. One a Daddy Long Legs trundling toward a more venomous relative, only after basically running into his cousin did Daddy realize he was there, and Long Legs high stepped it away at top speed.

When the sun makes it over the eastern hills and hits the pools: naked swimming, what could be finer. We break camp easily and in silence, division of labor dividing itself. A snake lies in the trail, absorbing solar energy, after becoming aware of us it slowly slithers directly towards us. It is curious and unafraid, possibly because the shape of man is still unknown to some creatures in this untrammeled country. It was massive though, four feet long, and thick, so I deterred it with my walking stick and strong talk, it stopped advancing and left the trail without haste.

Because of dinner plans with friends back in the semi-civilized world, we hike back at the relatively insane time of high noon, no shadows, no shade, it’s at least 100 degrees. Having lived and walked in the desert Noël is well prepared, I however am facing new challenges. We have to ration the drinking water purified by (camp) fire this morning, but I would slug it all if I could. A brook babbling through the trail sings to me, so I soak my kerchief there, wring it out over my roasting body and tie it around my head. A new awareness dawns: although I have always proclaimed it my favorite beverage, I still haven’t been this close to understanding water’s preciousness, and the way its presence means strength and comfort. The phrase “water is life” is tossed about often, but seriously, yes. Water is also our eternal companion, our loving father-friend-mother-source-teacher. This was a good moment for me.

Back at the car. Stuffed in the left wing mirror we find a hand-drawn map to an excellent swimming hole found by the gallant redneck guides, extra credit. Snacks in the shade, and an air-conditioned drive back to the coast. The mind busies itself again, but something of the quiet, overflowing place remains. If we trek into the wild, the wild treks into us.

Official Footwear

2010-05-17T16:01:00.000-07:00

Majik Dudes and some Jamaican Dudes endorse Clarks Shoes, and unaffiliated care products and rituals "tooth brush get out the dust fast."

Mention Majik Dudes at any Clarks retailer and receive a confused look courtesy of this blog.

Here Comes the Mantra

2010-05-13T00:53:00.000-07:00

A caveman crosses the highway, squats and gathers foragable weeds in a grocery store parking lot. Nourishment inconspicuously bursting up through the cement, an offering under our noses.

An awareness waits in the lingering dark. An ancient perspective is stirring in the dawn light. What will we see in the afternoon, when the sun is high, and no shadows fall? The stones and rivers, the nails and hinges, our veins and hairlines will speak. Here comes the mantra: the world is my body.

Ceremonies Conclusion (our 1st show!)

2010-05-02T11:50:00.001-07:00

The first Majik Dudes Ceremony was a privilege and joy to present. So many good feelings and good people it could grow a forest in my chest. Everyone who was present created the gift, I thank you and welcome you back in the nearish future.

Some pictures glow below, and videos of the event will rumble through here soon. Higher res pictures on my flikr

The Alter

Flora & Shadow installation by Noël Vietor & Fletcher Tucker

WORDS with their bones

BIRD BY SNOW with quietfriendsband

SEAN SMITH with a shadow

DANIEL HIGGS unfolding the mysteries

Opening Ceremony

2010-04-30T14:39:00.000-07:00

MAJIK PARTY FAVORS! The first arrivers to the May 1st show (Daniel Higgs / Sean Smith / Bird By Snow / Words /see info below) will receive two stones from a beach in Big Sur where a river returns to its source: the Pacific Ocean. A confluence of energy is present in this place and stored in these rocks. We will be conducting ceremony with these party favors, as we all venture to return to the source: the greater mind of the present moment.

Why We Gather

2010-04-28T13:42:00.000-07:00

We gather to share song-birth, the moment when music is born and we are born inside it. There is no separation between song and singer, between listener and creator, between creation and listener and creator and the moment itself. What can music do? It can remove boundaries, it can pick up the lines we draw between one another. A song fills a room and everyone in it. It travels as vibrations into our bodies and minds, and between us. Music reminds us of the vast ocean of undivided reality. Songs lead us back to the huge fluid freedom. So we gather, in the center of this world, the center that creates us as we in turn create it. We gather and we listen and play with sound and silence, with majik and mystery, with the subtle and the solid.

Please come to this gathering (below), our first Majik Dudes Happening, which will be ripe with majik, ready to be picked and eaten.

Daniel Higgs

Sean Smith

Bird By Snow

Words

May 1st, 2010

66 Sanchez St., San Francisco, CA

(66 Sanchez is James Howell Studio, a Yoga and Dance Studio)

8 PM

All-Ages

May 1st, concert happening! Daniel A.I.U. Higgs (mystic poet/ecstatic singer)

2010-04-12T11:36:00.000-07:00

66 Sanchez is James Howell Studio, a Yoga and Dance Studio with hardwood floors and skylights!

May 1st, 2010

66 Sanchez St., San Francisco, CA

8 PM

All-Ages

Fittingly this first show is featuring one of my favorite songwriters of this or any dimension: DANIEL HIGGS. Daniel Higgs performs alongside shruti drones, and nimbly constructed long-neck-banjo sound webs. His larynx is tuned to resonant frequencies of the cosmic, the Gnostic, the esoteric. He barters for meaning with words usually off-limits in the scenes of Indie… words like Christ and Lucifer feature in the lyrics of almost every one of Higgs’ songs. And yet the usually only ironically religious youth sit on loft and DIY art gallery floors taking in music that engages a set of symbols most of them (us) forcefully rejected in small towns across this primarily Christian nation. Maybe these (we) young people sense an altogether deeper meaning and understanding of the Biblical in Daniel Higgs because he was in Lungfish (the seminal hardcore band)… or maybe it is his appearance: gray beard, round face, and tattooed hands (like a Punk Pagan Santa)… maybe his past or his look are at odds with a conservative interpretation of his words. Maybe, but I think it is actually the songs themselves, and Higgs’ presence, his humble and profound presentation of songs that deal in religious themes in a way that is also humble and profound. Religion is the same as poetry, words, names and stories stand in for feelings and perceptions unspeakable, and unspoken. When you say Christ, you say a lot. And when Daniel Higgs says: “see the Devil in the Christ if it’s the true Christ that you seek”, he sums up 1,ooo lines about non-dualistic thinking, in one verse. That’s how it feels to me anyway!

SEAN SMITH is the best guitarist in California. He is a creator and destroyer of instrumental worlds.

BIRD BY SNOW is my band, which this evening will feature advanced sound structures rhythmic, joyful, and hopefully room filling.

WORDS is an improvisational group featuring reeds and brass for the benefit of our wave-mind experience.

British Anti-Road Activists (manifesto 1)

2010-04-01T10:54:00.000-07:00

These guys lived in a tree-house, or tree-fort, or something, and they hated roads. I am republishing their manifesto to kick off a series of wyrd manifestos. So here it is #1, in support of my comrades who didn't want another road in Devon:

‘This is the Independent Free State of Trollheim... we have no allegiance to the UK government... We do not recognize history, patriarchy, matriarchy, politics, communists, fascists or lollipop men/ladies... We have a hierarchy based on dog worship... Our currency is to be based on the quark barter system . We do not recognize the Gregorian calendar: by doing so this day shall be known as One ... Be afraid, be afraid, all ye that hear. Respect this State."

Economic Future (what to do with your change)

2010-03-25T17:36:00.000-07:00

This is Native American armor from the Pacific Northwest made of Chinese coins (presumably traded). I have a feeling that this utilitarianization of currency is the fine future of the global economy.

(images from the New York Natural History Museum)

Surfing Crow

2010-03-15T18:20:00.000-07:00

There was crow flying with a stick over the dunes. He held a piece of drift-wood with his left foot and cruised on the off-shore wind, dropping out of sight low behind the dunes, and then rising way up into the air. He flew from left to right, and right to left, but did not travel down the beach, nor did he land. What was up with this little bird-fellow and his stick?

Noël and I set about speculating. “It must be making a nest,” I said with ludicrous confidence. But he never put the stick down, nor did he make his way any-which-way, he simply danced in the air with the stick. “Maybe his leg is caught on it somehow?” Noël asked aloud. Instead of saying “nope, that's not it” the crow just grabbed the stick in his beak and then switched feet, holding it with his right foot instead. “How strange,” I thought, “he must be deranged, he’s lost his little bird brain.” Then he grabbed the stick with both feet, and cried out in apparent triumph, surfing with the driftwood above the sandy hills. And this thought struck my narrow mind: he is playing.

My first impulse is to think of animals (and by extension the wild) as practical, with all of their actions having “purposes.” Having ruled out the practical, we believed the crow to be in need, imagining him caught in some plastic soda-ring and drift-wood garbage trap… revealing my arrogance and guilt: seeing nature as fragile, and man (and myself) as careless and destructive. After ruling out a man-made danger I pronounced the crow insane for simply not adhering to the austere image that I had projected onto his ways.

Now however, I believe this crow was really marveling at his own crowness, as we sometimes delight in our humanness, or relative animalness. He was delighting in his grasping talons, his dexterous toes, his strong and able beak, and his magnificent wings. So too he seemed to give thanks and friendship to the wind, as they played together, crying out for joy as he surfed the stick with both legs; laughing like a child (or younger crow), surprised by each gust of wind, and his own marvelous game.

Have I seen this event clearly now? Certainly not, I am working with assumptions again, but to some extent I have seen my own thoughts more clearly, revealed a pattern of small-thinking that had essentially gone unchecked. Who am I to limit a crow, or conversely to proclaim its nature more complex? It is not my place to do so, but believing the wild to be at play is to see it with a wider view. Certainly it is a wider view than to consider the non-human world to be without play. Play is, after all, liberation… presence and movement without destination, action without wanting anything outside of the action itself… something a surfing crow can know without contemplation (I am assuming).

And there’s the final lesson from the Surfing Lama Crow, we don’t need to figure it all out, accepting the mystery is both humbling and illuminating. As Keats said: “The point of diving in the lake is not to immediately swim to the other shore, but to be in the lake, to luxuriate in the sensation of the water.” So it may be said that the point of a game is not to immediately complete it; nor is it most beneficial to deconstruct and examine the mysterious actions of a crow, perhaps better just to feel amazed… so now, I’ll shut up.

(image notes: a nice looking painting that I did not make but found somehow on the internet)

Yugen Movie V & VI (anti-viral videos)

2010-03-03T11:56:00.000-08:00

7 Haikus for Yoko

2010-02-24T15:43:00.000-08:00

On February 23rd I had the great privilege of seeing Yoko Ono perform with her new Plastic Ono Band. I have loved her for a long time, but seeing her was more emotional and inspirational than I expected. She has given her entire being to art and peace, and at 77 she continues to give as completely, as powerfully... if not more. I honor her here, in my own small way, with these 7 Haikus.

Not unlike a wolf

But when she howls at the moon

The moon will howl back

Living with two hearts

They are: an ancient mountain

And a baby bird

Warm face, cold fingers

Her mind always in the light

Hands in the water

A one word mantra

Because peace is so simple

She only says "yes"

A room that is white

Is not the same as silence

It says "I don't know"

Picking up borders

Knocking down the bedroom walls

To make one long house

No separation

In her dream we are all one

What a big family!

Yugen Movie III & IV (anti-viral videos)

2010-02-08T17:36:00.000-08:00

Yugen Movies. Short videos of boring things... a.k.a Anti-viral Videos. Actual locations of little importance.

Pelican corpse contemplation

Grass-wind-fog contemplation

Ancient intellectual property infringement

2010-01-30T13:00:00.000-08:00

Left: Tibetan scientific illustration, 1300's. Right: Operation game board, 1965.

Clearly Milton Bradley has some explaining to do. Here are a few more ancient Tibetan anatomical illustrations...

Alan Watts' Voice (unlimited power=ultimate boredom)

2010-01-29T00:44:00.000-08:00

Alan Watts was America's most loving teacher, our devoted guide, Rinpoche of the wild west. He is more or less responsible for any main-stream modern interest in eastern philosophy and religion in Europe or America. I love him for his untamed lucidity, his majik-mind-compass... he could begin on the distinct trail of one thought or question, then wander way off-road following seemingly disconnected and vague paths, and then quite naturally arrive at a conclusion both profound and simple... often deceptively simple. He wrote with such clarity that his words seem to form in my mind before I read them on the page... I could go on and on...

Below is an audio clip of a lecture he gave (in the 70's, maybe). This is ripped from a longer podcast from alanwattspodcast.com a site run by his son that posts posthumous lectures weekly. The pseudo-oriental music at the beginning of this clip was their mistake not mine, try to forget about it fast and focus on his majik.

Gary Snyder's Voice (2 poems)

2010-01-26T11:58:00.000-08:00

Here we have two poems written and read by Mr. Universe Gary Snyder. Such is his clarity of mind that he effortlessly reveals the cosmic nature of eating. And (against all odds) Snyder makes his relationship to his computer feel wild and beautiful! Hear is his voice.

"The Song of the Taste" & "Why I Take Good Care of my Macintosh Computer"

Forever Wild Above Us, Pt. 2 & 3

2010-01-20T12:26:00.000-08:00

The Canyon (Financial) District

The Rock-Dove is a remarkable flier. She can adjust her short wings and tail within a fraction of a second to account for a strong and sudden gust of wind. Evolution insists on these precise adjustments and movements when you nest and fly and feed near the walls of cliffs and in canyons... These Doves must change with the wind that is channeled through the canyon, or bounce off the rock walls themselves. The city offers many of the same challenges, and the Rock Dove thrives here too, living under its urban nickname the Pigeon. The wind that blows down the canyon floor of the financial district is a force to reckon with, especially considering the way traffic enhances the danger and unpredictabilty. Yet a sudden blast of air from a bus speeding by is taken in stride, and the Rock Dove simply flaps on.

Eternally Bonded

The Rock Dove, although magnificent, is not the top of the canyon (city) food chain. Indeed they are (and have always been) culled by the Falcon; bonded eternally as bio-regional foes. I sat reading in Dolores Park (my surrogate wilderness) sometime last year, I looked up from my book coincidentally at a beautiful moment; the timeless wild was revealing twenty feet in front of me... I watched as a Falcon struck a pigeon from above. The force of the blow pushed the Pigeon into the grass, where it fought for its life, trying to get out from under the Falcon, as it in turn tried to hold on tearing feathers from the Pigeon's back, leaving little grey clouds behind them. Somehow the Pigeon managed to get out from under the Falcon and back into the air, it joined its fellows there, falling into evasive formation flying, confusing and frustrating the Falcon. The Falcon settled in a tree, quite close to me and rested for nearly an hour, I watched it the whole time in wonder. No doubt it was exhausted, and even more hungry.

(photo notes: from the internet)

Forever Wild Above Us, Pt. 1

2010-01-20T12:05:00.000-08:00

Ravens and Red-Tail

Ravens amassed above a gas station on Divisadero (San Francisco). Construction meant traffic, so I got to watch with my friend Rob, speculating on the kerfuffle... "A cat on the roof, near a nest?" Unlikely, but "surely some predator, a raptor maybe?" Sure enough a Red-Tailed Hawk rose up from the canopy of the Shell Station and flew a few feet to rest on a street-light right in our sight-line. The other birds followed and resumed their pained shouting and molestation, dive-bombing and croaking ceaselessly. One enraged Raven pulled a feather from the crouching Hawks head, startling him. A small something, a Raven chick, fell to the street faster than the feather. And the hawk took off, and the ravens flew away, and grieved together.

(photo notes: from the internet)

Yugen Movie II (anti-viral video)

2010-01-11T13:05:00.000-08:00

Yugen Movies. Short videos of boring things... a.k.a Anti-viral Videos. Actual locations of little importance.

Lofoten Story

2010-01-05T23:00:00.000-08:00

“Let’s walk around that lake.” I said, or Dan said, or we both said. It was early evening in the endless arctic summer day on Å (pronounced: Oohah) an island in the Lofoten chain of islands/mountains in the Norwegian Sea. These mountains peak out of the ocean then run along its floor and don’t come up for air until Scotland. They are crumbling, and considered by some to be the oldest mountains in the world.

Å is an exotic vowel meaning “creek” in Norwegian, and there was indeed a tiny creek flowing out of the lake. I had a Nalgene™ water bottle 1/3^rd full, Dan had nothing, and we walked. No camera, how strange, no lens or screen to capture the world, instead it captured us, and nearly killed us twice. We tromped through marsh, mud, bog, and giant wet sponge moss, and so our shoes were soaked through. Four waterfalls fell around the lake, high and thin and misting. They seemed to say: “be wet with us,” and smiled, so we were, and did.

Our rations were depleted already, the water drunk, I filled my bottle with water seeping through a rock face, percolating there for centuries, the world’s most effective Brita ™. It was very cold and very good. The mud became a giant sinkhole, impassible. We hiked up above it, and walked a cliff’s edge, nearly fell (both of us) and crawled the remainder.

Beyond the cliff a stand of stunted pine trees stopped us for a while, we rested and went back to the lake-shore. There was a rock-pile like a castle there, we climbed inside and cannon fire seemed to ring out from an enemy fortress, in reality it was the sound of an enormous boulder trundling off a cliff, rolling faster than anything and splashing down in the lake. Enormous sounds! Enormous splash! Enormous boulder, rolling right through the place where we stopped to fill my water bottle… twenty minutes between certain death by rogue crushing stone, and play in an imaginary fort.

Four hours later the stroll we took on whim was complete... lake looped. The sun was up, as always, but the only restaurant was closed, so we bought slices of cake from a glass display and drank beers on the pier™ for dinner.

Yule Caroling

2009-11-27T14:22:00.000-08:00

Many of our Christmas carols come from a Pagan source, often

the ancient Celtic or Germanic people. The same is true of the holiday itself and most other Christian holidays. Certain traditions and dates of ritual-practice were maintained and modified by missionaries to draw Pagans into a Christian life. (This is why Jehovah's Witnesses do not celebrate even Christian holidays, because they come from an "impure" source.) Christmas was once Yule, which has many historic interpretations; originally it was a winter lunar holiday of the Germanic Pagans. However, winter-season and solstice celebrations are common in almost every indigenous or pre-modern culture.

All religions (for lack of a better word) draw upon some same key elements, and so we see the Pagan Yule present worldwide alongside other nearly universal practices and beliefs (consult the works of Joseph Campbell). Of course Christianity is not excluded from the collective mind, many of the concepts and traditions present in Christianity developed independently of other traditions, and yet are connected or related to other systems of thought and practices. A peculiar (and somewhat tangential) example comes to mind: when missionaries arrived in Papua New Guinea they found the indigenous residents difficult to convert because all concepts of sin and salvation were absent from their myths, but cannibalism was/is a fact of life. Therefore, it was the Holy Sacrament (the drinking and eating of the symbolic blood and body of Christ) that bridged the gap between these two seemingly separate cultures.

If we look far enough back into our family tree we are all indigenous. And if we look deeply enough into ourselves, and our modern practices we may find a Pagan face looking back at us, painted and singing. I have much to say on the subject of “song”… but for now I will content myself to address our Yuletide caroling. The Christian mythos and the consumer ethos of the modern solstice season do not suit me, and I’d hazard to guess they do not suit you either. But I do not wish to ignore the power and beauty of the season, in fact I want to sing in praise, gratitude and communion with the Earth and its People. So here is my favorite Christmas song ("The Holly and the Ivy") restored to its original Yule version. You may well find original Pagan versions of your own favorite songs online or in the library, or you may wish to simply look inward and “restore” the ancient song on your own. If you find a good one, or write your own, send it to me and I will post here. Good Yule to you!

The holly and the ivy / When they are both full grown / Of all the trees that are in the wood / The holly bears the crown.

Chorus: Oh, the rising of the sun / And the running of the deer / The shining of the winter stars / As the longer days draw near.

The holly bears a blossom / As white as any flower / As our Mother bears the infant Sun / In the winter's darkest hour.

(Chorus)

The holly bears a berry / As red as any blood / As our Father bears the hunter's spear / for His hungry children's good.

(Chorus)

The holly bears a prickle / As sharp as any thorn / As we shall bear our song of hope / On triumphant Yuletide morn.

(Chorus)
(photo notes: image of "the Holly King" from the internet, British origins)

Step to the right of your left hemisphere

2009-11-16T09:28:00.000-08:00

There isn't much I can say about this video, this story, or story-teller. The beauty, wonder and human-heartedness here are so expansive that I couldn't bring myself to summarize. Jill Bolte Taylor's gifts are great, and she is as generous. Here she sings an ancient song set to a modern tune. She sings for all the human family to listen and rejoice, knowing that peace, joy and compassion are our truest nature, our birth-right and our offerings. I love this woman!

TED is an altruistic non-profit contributing to the collective wisdom of mankind by organizing and distributing amazing talks by great humans.

Yugen Movie I (anti-viral video)

2009-10-26T12:10:00.000-07:00

Another monthly series to join the ranks... Yugen Movies. Short, silent videos of boring things... a.k.a Anti-viral Videos. Actual locations of little importance.

John Cage as Imagined

2009-10-22T17:20:00.000-07:00

“And what is the purpose of writing music? One is, or course, not dealing with purposes but dealing with sounds. Or the answer must take the form of paradox: a purposeful purposelessness or purposeless play. This play, however, is an affirmation of life – not an attempt to bring order out of chaos nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply a way of waking up to the very life we’re living, which is so excellent once one gets one’s mind and one’s desires out of its way and lets it act of its own accord.” –John Cage

"John Cage as Imagined" by Fletcher Tucker

First there was his voice, clear and gentle like that of a glacial stream. The voice, of course, intones the mind, which was even more clear, more gentle, perhaps more like a wind lightly pushing us this way and that way. His fingers were long, a gift not just for playing the piano, but also for pointing. He kept his fingernails overgrown so he could not clench a fist, nor clutch anything too tightly. He had ears that could rotate around (like a coyote) which he would also point with. Pointing was his favorite… with riddles and performances he would point to sounds, to symbols, to waves… to deep oceans. At parties he would entertain fifty conversations all at once, and answer every question he was asked with another question. He always brought guacamole, or a three-bean salad. John Cage was the Roshi of the New School. The subtle broom of western music. Your black-sheep uncle who never forgot your birthday. His only instrument was his mind, which he learned to let play itself. On his 433rd birthday John Cage was eaten by a shark while surfing. With his last breath, he was heard (only by the shark) to say: “How lovely to be eaten by such a great composer, one who can finally teach me about silence.”

photo notes: from the inter-net... further note: thanks are due to my friend Spencer Owen for showing me John Cage in a tangible way.

Transparency

2009-10-19T20:55:00.000-07:00

In the interest of transparency I have decided to show all sides of myself on this here blawg. Not just awareness seeking, riddle speaking stuff... I do sometimes doodle a comic. The first taste is free...

Yin Yang Halloween

2009-10-12T07:15:00.000-07:00

or "Yin Yang, Jack-o-'lantern, Celtic Cross - bad tattoo suggestions"

“What is a bad man but a good man’s job? What is a good man but a bad man’s teacher?” So says Lau-Tzu in the Tao Te Ching. In Taoism there is a belief that “opposites” are actually polar aspects of one, same thing, energy, event, or concept. In this way light and dark are thought of as mutually arising, which is to say: one did not create the other, they in fact exist only simultaneously; like-wise, one can never dominate or destroy the other, for they depend upon one another, and in fact are the same.

They are falsely named light and dark, and should rather be seen as lightdark, or perhaps by some other name [might I suggest ldiagrhkt?]… this is the same as our understanding that a magnet is what sits between the pulling and pushing poles, a central point that essentially cannot be located, and certainly cannot be extracted. When does the negative pole become positive, or visa versa? They must both be present to create a magnet. So it can be said of life and death, and good and bad, or, if you prefer, good and evil.

Halloween is less about “evil” than it used to be. Based on ancient Celtic traditions All Hollows’ Eve (formerly Samhain), observed every year on October 31st, is when the pole that is the living world collides with the pole that is the world of the dead; and so this planet is like the magnet “between” the poles.

Halloween sometimes brought darkness upon the villages and homes of the shamanic Irish. Evil might visit in the form of illness, bad crops, or disease among the livestock. October 31st was indeed a dangerous day. So how was death, darkness, and evil to be placated? How were the Celts to act? As Taoists it seems, for they did not close down their towns and hide at the end of October, nor did they fearfully fight for the other pole.

They did not fill their homes with idols and reminders of the living world, instead they burned animal bones, carved gourds like skulls, and hung skeletons upon their windows… young men even dressed as though dead and painted their faces black. Through these symbols and rituals the dead were free to move among the living. There was no fight.

The ancient Celts walked in the darkness as they walked in the light, knowing (it seems to me) that they are one… knowing that darkness, pain, sickness, fear, madness, sorrow, cruelty, and death are the troughs of waves with peaks called light, pleasure, well-being, wonder, clarity, love, kindness, and life. For the peak to exist at all there must be the trough, and so to fight for light to conquer dark is to fight also against light.

May this Halloween be totally Celtic, very dark and very scary, and so it follows... may the next day be bright and hopeful… forever and ever, Amen.

photo notes: taken by Fletcher Tucker in 2008 near Stockholm

Dursu Uzula

2009-10-08T11:10:00.000-07:00

Dursu Uzula is a film in Russian made in Siberia by master Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa in 1975. The plot is simple and goes as follows: Russian soldiers are exploring/mapping the wild far-east of their territory in 1902, by chance they encounter a trapper named Dursu Uzula who in turn becomes their guide.

Dursu is an Asiatic indigenous man of the region, in the parlance of the time he is known as a Goldi. I am assuming that this is a term for a certain ethnic group of the region, possibly a term used only in the early 1900’s; regardless of the actual meaning, the sound of the name casts Dursu (movie and character) in the right light… I conceive of it more as a title, Dursu is the Goldi because his precise knowledge and way of being is approaching its “golden years” in the rapidly modernizing world.

He is golden like leaves in partial decay, or the afternoon sun on an icy lake (frozen in the night, and thawing in the mid-day). This Goldi is a man of autumn, because he is the keeper of knowledge and awareness that was so rapidly in decline even in the early 1900’s.

With perfect knowledge of place Dursu is woven into the land, surviving by (what seems now to be) a super-sense of deep ecology that was already receding. The time of indigenous people, even in far-flung places, was almost over, and much of their ancient wisdom lost. Dursu sees this loss reflected in the attitudes of the Russian men he leads through the forest; he often mocks the soldiers comparing them to children because they notice so little.

Dursu meanwhile expresses expansive awareness and compassion for all beings, living and non-living, referring to all things in broken Russian as “men”. He expresses concern that stretches well beyond himself and his immediate situation, revealed in a scene where he repairs an abandoned shack in the forest and fills it with dry wood, matches, and rice, on the off-chance that someone will pass the hut and be in need.

His awareness too is far reaching, it reaches, in fact, beyond the limits of the land he knows, even this planet. Dursu (pointing to the sun): “this men is most important men, he dies, all men die…” (then pointing to the moon) “this men is also very important.” Dursu seems to know the truth: we are all in all.

Despite Dursu’s rich knowledge of place, the fragility of man is painted across this picture, as are notions of loss, and pain. Even when we are one with the wild, the world is still full of danger, and suffering arises anew. But we strive and strive and strive. By including fear and darkness this film dodges the sappy over-glorification/de-humanization of the indigenous man, Dursu is not set apart from the sufferings and sorrows of modern men… sorrow it seems is timeless and universal.

Lovely too in this movie is the dear friendship that develops between Dursu and the Russian Captain/Cartographer. The Captain’s reverence for Dursu is shown again and again in the film, and although he lacks the wild wisdom of the Goldi, the Captain is a compassionate and gentle spirit too, which brings in a hopeful view for this future-past. Although we loose some of our ways (and maybe even we loose our way entirely) the human heart is still ancient and good.

For eternally and always there is only now

2009-10-06T22:51:00.000-07:00

"Thus you can throw yourself flat on the ground, stretched out upon Mother Earth, with the certain conviction that you are one with her and she with you. You are as firmly established, as invulnerable as she, indeed a thousand times firmer and more invulnerable. As surely as she will engulf you tomorrow, so surely will she bring you forth anew to the new striving and suffering. And not merely "some day": now, today, every day she is bringing you forth, not once but thousands upon thousands of times, just as every day she engulfs you a thousand times over. For eternally and always there is only now, one and the same now; the present is the only thing that has no end." - Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger

Nobel Prize winning Quantum Physicist and truly Majik Dude. This quote is from his book My View of the World

photo notes: from "the" internet

Mushroom Mirror

2009-09-30T10:11:00.000-07:00

[a continuation from Autumn & the Death of the Buddha, which can be seen below]

Now we stumble into the territory of the mushroom and the mind. The universe, in Buddhist terms, is a series of mirrors… in Buddhist mind-science we investigate some things that are impossible to know (such as death) by investigating other aspects of being, which are a reflection of the same cycles… this is the origin of such theories as reincarnation.

The natural world is an endless cycle of spring, summer, autumn, winter, and spring again, and so it follows that the nature of consciousness, and of the human soul, would be a reflection of that cycle, now renamed: birth, life, death, void, and rebirth. Some of the cycle we can see directly (birth, life and death), and some of it we can only see reflected (void and rebirth). The mushroom’s ecological role, its historical significance in Buddhism, and its potential effects on the human mind also appear to be reflective.

Without the mushroom the world would become an impassable heap of detritus. Without various fungi, and like organisms, decomposition of dead plant and animal matter cannot occur fast enough to keep up with the cycle of death and birth. Waste is broken down, and refined by mushrooms as they build themselves of it; the chaotic clutter is clarified as a mushroom. This process is reflected in the human mind when our ways of seeing are clarified and refined by eating certain mushrooms (psilocybin).

The world of perception is similarly cluttered with debris, and waste, in this case: language, memory and associations… mind leaf-litter. Now we travel deeper into concepts like phenomenology and thusness, ideas that would fill this and many blogs if we were to start excavating thoroughly… should you be interested and uninitiated I recommend reading Heidegger for a western take, and Dogen for an eastern one. Here is my understanding…

Instead of seeing the fabric of the world as it is, we see it as it has been described. We do not usually see a tree when we look at a tree, we also do not see the complex and beautiful ecosystem in which it is woven (and of which it is also weaver), instead we identify that living object as tree because it fits a description, a memory, a string of words and thoughts. We also seldom see past the words and associations themselves, and it is even more seldom that we understand some part of the world not as a separate entity, cut-off and categorizable, but in fact as an inseparable aspect of the whole.

We cannot be fully present if these problems persist, we cannot perceive the true thusness of any one thing, nor can we perceive the Oneness of all things. Our mind needs a mushroom; whether it be a real mushroom (like a psilocybin), or a reflective practice (like meditation).

The mushroom helped the Gautama Buddha sew his cells back into the earth, to unbind his subtle-self from his body. His life was a life of symbols, a life of instruction, so I am inclined to consider why he pointed to the mushroom in his last moments… probably not to turn us all into psychedelic-trippers (although the people of Nepal were certainly aware of these mushrooms, which they used and called “Traveling Plants”)… The Gautama was, I think, pointing once again at the mirror, which reflects another mirror, and so on and so forth as we reflect each other, as the universe reflects us, as "the entire moon is seen reflected in a single dew drop"(quote from Dogen), as the path of self liberation is revealed in a single mushroom. The series of reflections, as in the “tunnel” made by two mirrors, is endless, as are the cycles themselves, as are the mysteries we contemplate.

Happy autumn to you!

photo notes: taken by Fletcher Tucker in 2009, on Orcas Island Washington

Autumn & the Death of the Buddha

2009-09-29T12:00:00.000-07:00

Pumpkins and gourds, golden leaves, and Halloween decorations are the trappings of autumn in the west. In the east the mushroom (in its many forms) is the symbol of the season. Autumn is most simply a time of slow death. Plants and animals turn their attention inward to prepare for the impending dark. Deciduous shrubs and trees shed their leaves, their connection to the sunlit world; instead they sit and wait as sticks and bramble. Bears and mice dig graves in the earth, preparing to sleep as though dead for months. Snakes slither into caves, and toads slip under the mud, both plan to freeze. Birds and insects leave the sky. The living world rests between exhale and inhale… for the most part.

The mushroom spore thrives in the fall, however, absorbing old wet leaves, fallen trees, half-frozen corpses, and piles of shit, rematerializing them into focused beams of matter and energy (the mushroom itself).

It is no wonder that this marvelous organism has become synonymous with autumn (in Asia), as it is quite common to witness the mushroom’s appearance, as if by magic, in the shadows of the crumbling and retracting fall environment; arriving as everything leaves, being born as everything else appears to die.

There is much poetry contained in the tiny mushroom, even more so when we consider its place in the legends/histories of Buddhism. The Guatama Buddha’s last meal included a poorly identified poisonous mushroom, from which he fell ill and died soon after. His death, of course, was actually his liberation from the world, an event necessary on the path to Realization, Oneness, reunion with the Self.

So when we celebrate autumn, we celebrate the mushroom. But we must also consider greater symbolism in the fungus, because as we celebrate the mushroom we also celebrate the death of the Buddha, and so Oneness in and of itself. [to be continued…]

photo notes: taken by Fletcher Tucker in 2008, near Malmö Sweden. This mushroom is called Flugsvamp it is amazingly poisonous, but if prepared carefully (as it was by the Vikings) it can be very powerful in removing both fear and pain, which is why it was ingested by many warriors before battle... no doubt partly responsible for the Vikings' historical reputation of being unstoppable in battle.

Tree Tits

2009-09-28T11:37:00.000-07:00

Maybe part of a new series of images called sexinature... Just to class things up a bit.

photo notes: taken by Fletcher Tucker (noticed by Noël Vietor) 2009, Point Reyes California

A Majik Word

2009-09-24T12:42:00.000-07:00

In Japanese there is a word, yugen, for which there is no corollary in English. Yugen is the word for a feeling, which can be described in English only by describing situations where the feeling is present:

“To watch the sun sink behind a flower clad hill, to wander on and on in a huge forest without thought of return, to stand upon the shore and gaze at a boat as it disappears behind distant islands, to contemplate the flight of wild geese seen and lost among the clouds.”

These are examples of yugen from Seami (a.k.a. Zeami, a.k.a. Kanze Motokiyo), Japanese playwright and theorist from the 15th century. It is, at least to my brain, not immediately simple to draw connections here, intellectually I mean. There is however an ineffable similarity between these situations. If I am to apply my wider imagination, I am quite easily transported to places/happenings I have experienced myself, places/happenings similar to those described by Seami, and I understand the feeling that is same, and so the word with my feelings.

I am likely to prattle on and on about the short-comings of language on this blog, elevating my ironic status to threat-level-mauve… The complex traps, snares and veils of language are a favorite thought-topic of mine. Certainly language does not always work in our favor, not because it is weak, but because language is pervasive and unbelievably powerful.

Reality, individual and shared, is determined by our attention. We cannot make sense of the world in front of us if we do not focus on something (visa vi: leave some things out). Likewise, our senses focus their attention (over millions of years of evolution) on certain wavelengths and types of vibration. Surely there are innumerable aspects of the world, our lives, ourselves, consciousness, and the expansive universe that allude our perception, because we cannot sense them, or because we have not learned, or have forgotten how to focus our attention on them.

On the most practical level, in most cases, for most people, language is our spotlight, our net for the world. We sense what we can say, we do not notice what we do not have words for, and we often struggle with feelings or perceptions we cannot describe… this is something I seek to undo in my life, some language liberation is my goal. But before the spotlight is just daylight, we can widen the beam, expand the net we cast. Sometimes I find a majik word, like yugen, that reminds me that there can be liberation even within this heavy-handed system of symbols and grunts we’ve devised. There are mantras, songs, and incantations… and sometimes a single word.

photo notes: taken by Fletcher Tucker 2008, Stockholm Sweden

Why I Stopped to Look

2009-09-21T15:18:00.000-07:00

I began to investigate a murder as I got out of my car to photograph the corpse of an adolescent black-tail deer. She was struck down by a car or truck, possibly moments before Noël and I saw her in the road. Her body was cold, but the blood had not even begun to dry, nearly neon-red and shinny in my headlights.

There are those among us who would call this photo morbid; those who would see only the sad fact that our (human) systems brought about the untimely and unnatural end of this young being. They are both well meaning perspectives; they offer a framework for compassion, respect, and awareness in their own way. Certainly I do not wish to scandalize this animal with my photos, nor do I wish to ignore the relatively tragic impact of human intrusion (in this case roads and autos).

I stopped to investigate, searching not for the fingerprints of the killer, but in fact for the fingerprints of death itself. On this trail, laid afresh, I must contemplate absence more than presence, void instead of form. Subtle though they are, the dark, the cold, and silence are the tracks and leavings of eternity. So far, this appears more morbid than the photo. But I am actually speaking about a sense of wonder.

By this corpse I marveled at the completeness of death, and simultaneously at the magnificence of consciousness. When consciousness left that deer, so did the deer. I did not stand in the road by a doe; I stood rather in the absence of one, a void-doe, a no-deer. So much was clear upon seeing the strange, clouded forms that were once eyes, and upon hoisting it up (to place it off the road, to prevent further endangerment of drivers and scavengers, Noël’s good idea), touching the once-flesh, feeling its weight devoid of the warmth and grace that creates “deer.” Its body was always just a magnificent puppet made of grass and soil, rain and salt, electricity and movement. It is amazing how immediately and irrevocably someone (person or animal) simply becomes the land, deposited as a lump of earth at his or her moment of death. We rely only on ephemeral cell walls for boundaries, separating out bodies from silt, separation contingent upon the breath… when it leaves so do the boundaries, not over time, but in an immeasurable instant.

This is why I stopped to look. It is, I think, effortless to sense these aspects of being, life, death, and consciousness, if you take a little time in the presence of a dead animal; dead humans are, of course, less accessible (practically and emotionally), but could inspire the same awareness… some of what we are also leaves, and some too becomes earth. These are glimpses of lights almost imperceptibly subtle, ideas so huge I cannot get far enough away to take them in. Even so, there is clarity in the calm, cool space left by those who have left; though I have no final conclusions. This, like all, (murder) mysteries is left unsolved, but I investigate none-the-less, grateful simply for the chance to do so.

[A quote relating to the value of animal-corpse contemplation compared with the short-comings of human-corpse contemplation. In-other-words, why people don't see much beauty or value in dead people.] “Dead humans contain too much horror, I think the vision of eternity is muddled by horror.” - Matthew Wray Robison

photo notes: taken by Fletcher Tucker 2009, near Tomales Bay California

A Majik Place

2009-09-17T18:18:00.000-07:00

These photos are from Nimis (a.k.a Ladonia) and it is wonderful. A drift-wood city built by one man in the South of Sweden over 20 years. The wood was delivered by the sea, and cobbled together with nails hauled to this stone beach in a sack, on a back. Read about Nimis, dream about Nimis.

photo notes: taken by Fletcher Tucker 2008, at Nimis in the south of Sweden

Journal from the Sierra-Nevadas

2009-09-03T11:10:00.000-07:00

A bat in the middle of the day flies over my family. A blessing, an omen.

- 10 / VIII / 09

Then bat shit on me in the night, that’s new to me… I’ve been dropped on by birds (song & sea), slipped on dog, marveled at mountain lion, and thrown cow… but never visited by bat scat. Later, lonely owl song far off, looking for companionship.

- 11 / VIII / 09

Thirty-three meteorites seen from the stone plateau of our camp, some with long tales stretching across a quarter of the bowl. Usually “shooting stars” cannot be confirmed, even by yourself, they are like a flash of spirit. Instead, tonight we wowed together (with who knows how many more on the dark side of the Earth). Wonder resounding at the movement way above us, connecting us to the farthest edge of our home.

- 12 / VIII / 09

Blue & white butterfly landed on my journal, I wrote this one second later.

- 13 / VIII / 09

Three ravens in formation fly over, low. Distinguished from crows by the sound of their wings, whoosh-whoosh (like a Pterodactyl), and the depth of their cry. Hours later from the top of a fur tree one raven calls another, its call is answered and together they circle in the air, one left the other right. Far off, just black specks, two more ravens mirror them exactly.

- 14 / VIII / 09

An owl again at nightfall, heard between meteorites, “only” five now. This time not so lonesome, the call is answered a half-octave higher. So they move tree-by-tree, calling out and listening with endless patience, seeking out their partner in song. Whether their corporeal forms ever met I can’t be sure, but their voices meet close to our camp… calling in different pitches in perfect unison. The over-tones ring off the rocks, the air in their bird-lungs vibrates intimacy. I hold my breath in gratitude.

- 15 / VIII / 09

photo notes: taken by Fletcher Tucker 2009, Sierra-Nevada Mountains

Subtle music surrounds us

2009-09-02T18:14:00.000-07:00

"We and nature are companions, and although authoritative voices do not speak from clouds, a vast, subtle music surrounds us, accessible via clarity and serenity" - Gary Snyder (quotation from Energy from the Moon)

Try to read everything Gary Snyder has ever written, and I will try too. May he live 10,000 years... if he wants to.

photo notes: from a google image search, photographer unknown.

an Indie Sutra

2009-09-01T13:10:00.000-07:00

“Concert at the Gateless Gate – Touring & Non-Attachment”

Surely this show, this song, must end. As soon as the thought of the concert forms its impermanence begins also, expanding and thinning out, in unstoppable entropy. A song, like a life, lasts only as long as the breath, and stretches only in our conceptions past the immediate present moment. It is in this moment that we encounter the most astonishing gift of song, a potentially absolute union of performer with listener, listener with performer, and all listeners with one another. This extends only as far as one’s will to surrender entirely to that moment. Should we be willing… here we are reprieved of boundaries, as musician and audience participate equally in the mind-manifesting that is song-birth.

Though they end, after this show there is another. Despite the frustration or elation experienced during any “gig” the musician must let it go, for it is fleeting and soon to be replaced. Although a generous audience, fine venue, and evening of excellent playing can sustain and up-lift an artist, it cannot actually be preserved. And though inattentive listeners, impolite sound engineers, and many false notes can diminish one’s confidence, the show is soon forgotten by all, and swallowed by the void instantly with no sentiment. There is nothing to be done, no pain to be avoided, no pleasure to be preserved… only what arises as it does.

Thus we find the touring road of music-makers to be actually the road of non-attachment and present-mindedness. So we sing as the gateless gate comes into view, perhaps far off, but always approaching.

- Fletcher M. Tucker, June 2009 (on tour)

photo notes: taken by Gyða Björg Sigurðardóttir 2009, in a cave in western Iceland

Basho as Imagined

2009-08-31T19:10:00.000-07:00

Today would have been the 69^th birthday of Robbie Basho, composer, guitarist, pianist, singer, sage. In memoriam I have written this piece about him…

“Basho as Imagined” by Fletcher Tucker

“Factual” information can be found at the wikipedia
His records are rare, and almost none of them are currently in print, so look for them to download. I recommend “Voice of the Eagle” & “Visions on the Country” but also stand by each and every one his many records.

"The Eagle cried to the sun: we are all one!"- Basho

photo notes: taken by Fletcher Tucker 2007, of an amazing wood carving in a museum in Paris France

"what we will do"

2009-04-26T02:46:00.000-07:00

Majik Dudes is mind manifesting in three:

I. Future presentations of live in(ter)dependent musics in San Francisco. We are cultivating all-ages spaces (only). Audience and performer both contribute to the “mind” that is the moment of song-birth, Majik Dudes will respect this union with rad venues that nourish creation. Soon… in Autumn, we will start gathering together, for shows with local and touring artists. Shows will be cheap, and the music will be good.

II. Writings related to music, art & awareness. Publishing of some of my naturejournals & thought wonderings, poetry, and prose. And "reviews" (for lack of a better word) of records and musicians I enjoy.

III. Personal and group artworks published. Objects (utilitarian and decorative) displayed online.

Check back soon.