Blues - TLC 41

In Fujian, China using flakey chalk Lucky wrote Blues Music Story on a broken green board for eighty classless university students.

He spoke of the African Diaspora, history and slavery in America and how indentured humans gathered to make music and dance after long hard days in the sunshine of their love.

The blues manifested stories and songs as men and women left rural villages on economic migrations for city jobs like China now. Floating people in a floating world.

The blues expressed physical and spiritual loss from family, friends and communities. It’s “feeling, emotional, deep in your spirit soul” music. He pulled out his blues harp and they said, “Oh it’s a cochin.”

“Want to hear some blues?” 

“Yes.”

He blew sweet slow stuff, picking up the tempo blasting rifts of wailing train whistles and a sense of loss forever.

“This is called, ‘If you don’t help me I’ll find someone else,’ by Howling Wolf. When you’re a wandering minstrel or a Griot - a West African performer who perpetuates oral traditions of a family or village by singing histories and tales, considered by musicologists to be a link with the acoustic blues - or a Seanachai - a traditional Irish storyteller of truths, myths and legends - or a shaman, seer and adept it’s natural. I am a conduit for music. It comes through me.”

After hearing and feeling the blues students practiced making a Western sandwich: bread, tomatoes, mayo, relish, turkey slices, mustard, onions and lettuce. How do you consume a sand wish with chopsticks?

Let’s eat, said 1.6 billion peasants. We’ll eat anything with wings and legs except tables and planes.

New music echoed outside Room 317. Students ran to painless windows. 

Across the street a young Indonesian boy sat on a piece of plywood in the shadow of a long tall Sally art deco three-story concrete building.

It towered above a gated Jakarta middle-class community filled with designer homes, wild tropical blossoming fruit trees and displaced dysfunctional spoiled offspring spinning yoyos. 

In his left hand he held a silver chisel. In his right a flat edged hammer. He slammed metal against metal on a bronze bridge between stone and iron ages.

Between knowledge and wisdom.

Between an object and a concept.

Tap-tap-tap. Music flaked dust. Wind-spirits carried his chorale and tribal memories of family, rice paddies, nature and seasons.

Accompanying him a girl using a brothel broom of tree branches whisked a gentle rhythm creating their symphony of sadness, loss and neglect. They went on tour. Standing Room Only. Sold out forever and a day.

collecting dust

One day he climbed through the center of Bali inside magical light past an extinct sacred volcano at Lake Batur carrying spare ammunition, a small portable machine, a map carved on narwhal bone, a roll of scented four-ply toilet paper, codices or painted books and texts on bark paper called Amate, and cactus fiber including animal skins and dialogue of Mayan origin.

His hair caught fire. Gathering flames he lit a piece of bark for guidance. He mixed volcanic ash with water, creating a thick paste of red ocher, a cosmetic balm rich with antioxidants. He applied this to his skin to gain entry and passage through the spirit world of ancestors.

To become clay he created clay. He needed dust. He collected dust and minute grains of mica. Teams of gravediggers, weavers, butchers and typists explored rain forests, jagged mountains and impenetrable jungles collecting dust.

Hunters dived into, under and through massive Columbia waterfalls near tributaries where the confluence of Northwest rivers gnashed their teeth, snaking past abandoned Hanford nuclear plants where fifty-five million gallons of radioactive waste in decaying drums left over from W.W. II slowly seeped 130 feet down into the ground toward water tables.

The waste approached 250 feet as multinational laboratories, corporations and Department of Energy think tanks vying for projects and energy contract extensions discussed glassification options and emergency evacuation procedures according to regulations and Robert’s Rules Of Order inside the chaos of their well ordered scientific communities.

Tribal survivors ate roots and plants garnished with entropy.

Survivors passed through civilizations seeking antiquities. They reported back with evidence sewn into their clothing to avoid detection at porous India-Tibetan borders. They severed small threads along hemlines, Chinese silk gowns and Japanese cotton kimonos. Their discoveries poured light rays into waterfalls rushing over Anasazi cliff dwellings into sage and pinion forests.

Survivors arrived at a mythopoeic part of their journey. They reflected on the unconscious residue of social, cultural, ethical and spiritual values.

They needed masks. They needed to understand the underlying mysteries inside death masks. They confronted the realm of spirit. They bought masks in open air markets on their pilgrimage. Masks signifying the dignity of their intention thwarted demons and ghosts. They became spirits dancing in light.

Everything was light in their shamanistic interior landscape. They let go of the ego, Ease-God-Out, detached from outcomes, eliminated the need for control or approval, trusted their spirit energies, and remained light about it.

Inside light with slow fingers and long thin ivory nails they turned clay into pots. Spinning spirals danced on a wheel of time. They finished throwing them, used them for tribal ceremonies and smashed delicate clay pots to earth. They exploded into the air creating volcanic ash coating everything in a fine dust. He dug into the soil of his soul. He scattered raw turquoise stones on a trail of sacrificial tears, on a long walk through seasons and countries.

A Century is Nothing, Subject to Change.

close march

let's close march, elf said to orphan.

yes, agreed orphan, march is still a day to go such a hot furnace of yellow laos skies as farmers burn fields 

o my yes indeed, agreed elf, all this sticky humid trapped hot air mixed with flying black ashes permeates pristine air water and soil

such a beautiful mess, said orphan donning a cotton gauze multi-threaded mask to prevent malaria and dengue

what's a dengue, wondered elf, scrubbing for an open heart surgical operation in hanoi

it's the fluid relaxation of intellectual reasoning as a shaman mask proclaims, confessing to the world 

see this face

i am you

Chunchiet Cemetery & Spirit Story

Greetings,

The chunchiet animist people of Ratanakiri in remote northeast Cambodia bury their dead in the jungle. Life is a sacred jungle.

Animists believe in the universal inherent power of nature in the natural world. The Tompoun and Jarai, among many animist tribal people in the world have sacred burial sites. 

This is the Kachon village cemetery one hour by boat on the Tonle Srepok river from Voen Sai. It is deep in the jungle along the river. You need a local guide and a translator speaking the local dialect.

The departed stays in the family home for five days before burial. Once a month family members make ritual sacrifices at the site.

The village shaman dreams the departed will go to hell. In their spirit story dream the shaman meets LOTH, Leader of the Hell who asks for an animal sacrifice. The animist belief says sacrificing a buffalo and making statues of the departed will satisfy LOTH.  It will renew the spirit and return it to the family.

After a year family members remove old structures, add two carved effigies, carve wooden elephant tusks, create new decorated roofs and sacrifice a buffalo at the grave during a festive week long celebration with food and rice wine for the entire village. 

New tombs have cement bases and carved effigies with "modern" gadgets like cell phones and sun glasses. Never out of touch. See your local long distance carrier for plans and coverage in your area. The future looks brighter than a day in a sacred and mysterious jungle.

See more...

Metta.

Myth's Mask

Shaman's mask, Vietnam.

Greetings,

People here love to look back. It is a passion. It is a genetic molecule of fear, doubt and uncertainty. Perhaps also just a plain childish innocent curiosity of wanting the past, needing.

Yes. Focus on needs, not wants. Needs manifesting their desire. A desire for a ghost. We are all passing through. 

They look back to see if they see, yes, in their vivid reptilian imagination a ghost. Their ghost. A ghost from a family, friend, lost. Looking for clues at their personal ground zero. 

They've arrived from distant galaxies. Human habitation sites were discovered here 500,000 years ago. Primitive agriculture began 7,000 years ago. A. Go. 

So it figures, accepting an evolutionary premise, their DNA star chart continues its genetic dance today. 

I live in talking monkey zones. They eat rice. They drink water. They wash one set of clothing and hang it out to dry on poles. They burn down the forest. They harvest brooms. Their shamans bring rain. Tropical downpours allow people the luxury to wash cars. 

They use their faint star energy to look, not really seeing, behind them wondering, all the wondering. 

Food is cheap here. Medicine and education is expensive. This has nothing to do with simians. It has nothing to do with the two women sitting in a dark neighborhood food joint. Plastic chairs faces a tall cinder block wall. Chickens, goats and cats prowl, peck and forage through garbage and dreams.

One woman sits quietly in a deep meditation. Her friend parts her hair gently, looking for minute insects, cleaning her scalp. They take turns cleaning and inspecting. This genetic behavior is being repeated in zoos, jungles, and rain forests.

Chattering oral story tellers play Bronze Age drums, pounding out 3rd century tunes.

Healing the people with music.

Males wash their little toy machines. They study the accumulated grime under long yellow curling fingernails. They play chess along the road waiting for passengers. People eat spicy rice mixed with tofu, chicken, veggies, and green and red chillies.

One human creates a brave new world. Forging new futures with a patriotic purpose. An assessment on process in a data based star cluster.

Dream mask mirror and swimming...

She showed me how to swim with gigantic sea turtles and practice sitting.

How to dive deep exploring coral and amazing underwater life forms. How to explore below the surface of appearances.

Experiencing the Temple of Complete Reality on a Taoist mountain in Sichuan once upon a time. Climbing through primal forests with young mature smart Mountain-Nature Girl. She lives in the mountain. Some live below. Others live on. She lives in. She knows every herb, plant, flower, tree, river and medicinal process in the forest.

Mountain-Nature girl with Vivian.

How the heartbeat was an eternal rhythm.

Then we were going up. Now we are going down.

How to breath through a mask. "What kind of mask? Is it hand carved from the wood of tribal memories?" I asked her. 

"Yes," she said, "it is a manifestation of long lost symbols, a primitive culture. It is a shamanic ritual, a dance trance. When you put on the mask you become the thing you fear the most, your basic human nature."

"Does this mean I will evolve into a being filled with the ability to scheme and deceive?"

"Perhaps. This is a highly evolved trait of human intelligence. Do you remember what you wrote about J. Joyce, how he went into exile with silence and cunning?"

"Yes. He knew how to put seven little words in order. He was a cunning linguist."

"Well, this ability to scheme and deceive is your cunning, your instinctual learned behavior. It separates you from less evolved life forms like apes, plankton and sea enemies-anemone (fish eating animals) and androgynous androids in the deep subconscious."

"Are you a clown fish?"

"Look in your dream mask mirror."

Play your drum music.

Metta.