JOURNAL ENTRY 02/24/2004

Just rediscovered these notes from five years ago.


022404-022704
Notes and fieldwork for the next CD: The Somnambulist.


THE BOTTOM OF THE RIVER
Time to move on now facing this glistening universe of possibilities. I'm at the river with the sun on my shoulders, hopping from rock to rock without a plan. It's nice if you know where you are going, as Gene would say, up stream, or down. I'm going up stream, to the falls, where the water is deepest and the cliff face seemingly impassable. Here I will climb as high as I can reach, and dive so deep that my ears will be filled with music never before heard. Here I will glide easily into the shadows of imagination where inspiration is given freely to those who refrain from seeking it. One sees when one stops looking. One hears when one stops listening. It is deceptively simple. The river bottom is the place of metamorphosis, where worms are transformed into butterflies; where dreams become music, and music becomes the dream.

If you have important questions and want to consult with the forces of the universe directly, you must go to the bottom of the river and sit quietly for a while with nothing on your mind. Bide your time as if you were waiting for a bus. Whistle a little tune if you care to. Cool your heals. When it is quiet the mist will lift and there it all is, everything you ever knew; everything you ever wanted to know and more, beyond wonder! This is the place of perfect peace where the vagueness of dream and the harshness of reality dissolve in one another’s arms like lovers, becoming a merged and new form of consciousness. This is the realm of inspiration where thought without thought begins taking a physical form. Here, the process of amalgamation is set into motion with but a flick of the mind. It is a wonder indeed, to turn the wisp of an idea into a physical object, to take something from the shadow of imagination and to bring it into the sensual world. It is a deep and fulfilling process. A transaction with God.

So now, as I hop along the river from one sun warmed rock to the next, heading steadily toward the deep pool beneath the falls where I will submerge, the only thing I know for sure is that I am a mayfly taken a wing on this sunny afternoon, drifting where the breeze will take me, and landing where I may fall. Halleluiah! Here, I am a mayfly gliding on river air, shedding my skin in the warm sun. Halleluiah! Here, we bathe together in the silence that always comes just before the moment of birth, and just before the moment of death. Halleluiah! Here, there are no bombs. Halleluiah!

Time to move on.

Halleluiah!



022404
Standing here along highway 20 in the mist of a rain storm watching the logging trucks and motor homes whiz by every few moments going either east or west, making a long sizzling sound that fades away.

The artist’s job is to shed the cloak of doubt. The universe takes over from there.

Everything worthwhile begins at the bottom of the river where the sound of one heart beating defines the silence; where hellgrammites go to sleep.

Title for a piece: Dance of the Sleeping Hellgrammites.
Title for a piece: Here, There Are No Bombs
Title for a piece: Don't bother me now. I'm dreaming.

Sleepwalkers don’t always walk alone.
I will try some collaborations.
John Deaderick and I are talking about working together on a piece. A dream piece. (Heartbeat. Sudden changes. A radio in the distance. Whispering.)
There are no limitations.
I am The Somnambulist, dreaming within the dream.
Now I have shed the cloak of doubt and walk without fear across the flaming hot coals.
I never could figure out how they did that without burning their feet. Now I know the trick is hidden in the truth of the smile, the smile that covers the heart, the smile, as Henry said, at the foot of the ladder, where the first step is also the last step.

The smile of innocence.

My mother is teaching me now about innocence.
Innocence is hidden beneath the cloak of self-consciousness (doubt) and then revealed again in death.
Innocence, though smothered, is never suffocated.
Innocence is our motivator.
Innocence is the Muse.
Listen for the sound of innocence in everything you hear.