Disco Meditationz 4 - Ceremony

We arrived at the Waterfall House early in the afternoon with plenty of time to kill before the ceremony. I got a taste of the Shamans on the bus ride upstate. Nando was sitting upfront and helping Jonathan to navigate the way and Taito Jose was sitting in front of me, holding up a lively conversation with the colombian architect turned massage-therapist sitting next to me. He obviously has a brilliant sense of humor, because he made her crack up all the time. Another one of those moments I wished my Spanish was more than rudimentary. All in all they both seemed to have no special demeanor or attitude that would have let you know they had any kind of special status in the group.
After our arrival we explored the ground a bit, I snuck out to the Waterfall and had a puff of macoña, we had been instructed to refrain from drinking, smoking weed and eating dairy for a few days before sitting with the medicine. I had decided that if I could go without two out of the three, I'd be doing better than ever, so I had a way of justifying jeopardizing my experience with another toke. The place was beautiful and the people arriving by and by all seemed to be open minded, interesting and all in all fairly balanced types. After I caught my buzz, I had a chat with Joao and then grabbed my guitar to use the time for some woodshedding. Played some flute too as I watched people arrive. Another transgression, someone arrived with some bread and butter and I joined in on the feast, having fasted all day ( fruit salad in the morning), until one of the helpers saw us and reprimanded us that we were not supposed to be eating right before the ceremony. Mental Note to blame it on Lamia if the trip does not get me off. So more waiting. Then suddenly it is after nine and everybody is sitting in the meditation hall with their little corner secured and laid out with blankets and cushions. After a little looking around I find some things to make as spread and settle into my corner. Nando and Taito Juan take over an hour to explain to us what to expect and how to allow the conversation with the plant, how not to look for anything but to let it come, they pass around an enormous tabacco 'cigarette' off which everybody is supposed to take 4 puffs, then a solution of tabacco water that u suck up your nostrils to cleanse your nasal cavity and prevent swelling of your sinuses ( my guess). I receive my medicine and bum some tobacco from Joao, realizing that we are allowed to smoke during the ceremoney to enhance the plants workings. Time passes and I see people around me getting nauseous, purging, starting to rock back and forth, moaning and laughing, all the signs of them 'getting off'. I tell myself to let loose, give in to the plant, nothing. After the second cup it seems like it all washed thru to my intestines and I suddenly have to go take a dump, but still no nausea or hallucinations. I try to concentrate on the flickering of the candle on the ceiling. I get upset at the elder playing a harmonica, it sounds like the first sounds a kid would play on the thing after u hand it to him, then repeating over and over, like a NY ice-cream-truck. I am making a note to make fun of this the next day, then get sucked into judging Kathi for 'faking' singing in tongues, even though her singing is angelic, my jealous little ego is telling me that she is just putting it on, no way a german girl from South Africa is going to rip it in tongues and impress me. Ha. Might as well show me a 15 year old japanese kid playing like Charlie Parker. I want the real shit.
I want the elder to play a wooden flute or sing, something- indigenous-like. I think, this is a good show, I wish I could be part of it and get paid. I calculate 35 times 170 times 3 and wonder how the loot is split up. All that kind of judgemental BS. Then I realize I still have not got any Visions. 3rd cup. Now I finally have to vomit. but it takes about 2 minutes, a short purging and I am back to waiting. It's getting light outside and I am giving up , one last cup. Nando asks me if I am driving the next day and after I tell him someone else is, he lets me have another cup. I throw up right away this time, but nothing. Kathi comes over to pull me in the middle for the cleansing of the newbies. An elaborate procedure starts, Nando and Juan are dancing, stomping around us chanting in tongues, Kathi is off to the side, massaging us one by one while she is singing a lovely little abstract song that goes with the heart massage and lifting of bad energies. I remember thinking, great, now you've paid 170 bucks, to shit yourself ( almost) puke out your heart and then let a guy in a funny costume spit on you.
I have to admit though that despite my well practiced arrogance, by the time Taito was straightening out my spine and Kathi had exorcised my bad energies I had given up resistance and felt thankful for their efforts. Nevertheless I needed to get of the hard floor and found myself a corner off to the side where a couch was offering a better snoozing-experience. Just as I heard them announcing that the ceremony was now officially over, I grabbed the guitar and stole myself off to a spot in the sun to do some playing and contemplate the things that had transpired in my head during the night. That is when it all started to make sense. The first thing I played was a beautiful sounding mistake. I repeated it and worked out the kinks. then played it over and over. Like an ice-cream truck!

Disco Meditations 3

So before you do an Ayuasca ceremony you are supposed to reflect on your intentions for your conversation with the plant. An official Statement was required for the back of the Medical Form that you have to fill out to free the organizers of the responsibility over your healing-trip.

My official statement was somewhat shortened to make it easy on Kathi, but after leafing thru 

mountains of notes that I'd made during various nights of uninhibited drug and alcohol fueled soul searching I was not able to narrow it down more that to these 8 Statements-

1. Need to make my choices and move into my fishbowl.

2. Gotta stop drinking cuz I can't afford the brain damage,

gotta stop thinking, cuz no one is to blame, damn it.

3.Want to tap into the pleasure pathway with my

 dopaminergic auto-acoustic reflexes.

4. Want to dare to do the new, that's when I grow.

5. like to work on the sexiest, dirtiest, sweetest, honestest ( !),

steampunkest, musically diversest collection of sound I can come up with

without using a single cussword ( Andy won't master it otherwise ;-0)

6.Old School new School we all gotta learn more,

burn baby burn like a disco inferno.

7.want to overcome addictive habituation, resolve accumulated burdens and become an active participant in joyful life, drinking that endless river in one single gulp. ( from I ching)

8.They got suicide bombers, bailouts and tax hikes,

we with the Baker's the cookers, the makers, the homesteaders and track bikes.

Stay tuned for an actual account of  my night of 'purging' with the plant and how it all started to make sense the next day. 

Disco Meditations 2

Ayuasca

After reading Jeremy Narby's 'The Cosmic Serpent - DNA and the origins of knowledge about three years ago I had always wanted to try participating in an Ayuasca Ceremony. But due to my pretty heavy involvement with alcohol and narcotics at the time, a weekend with a bunch of hippies and new age professionals seemed a little to out of place for me to fit in, in my dionysian state of mind. Give it a few years, an aging body that let's you know there is a limit to the amount of stuff u can sweat out by sitting around and doing nothing and - if you don't get of your ass and do something you will bore yourself to death and die- is just one recurring mantra besides many. Thankfully I discovered that I am still exited to run around like a little kid, playing tennis, skateboarding and even picking up the weights lately to get ready for some surfing this summer. So suddenly I am fairly clean, still a little cloudy in the head because the corner bar is just a little to close to home, but drug abuse seems to be a word from the past and the drinking is civilized if somewhat regular. Still missing the kick off, having the perfect morning

every morning kind of thing going on. So along comes Joao and offers me a chance to participate in this genuine ceremony upstate where I might get my intentions evaluated by the plant and find some solutions with the medicine if I open myself up enough to let some healing happen. OK. So this is what has happened in a nutshell:

I spent the most blissful time at the Waterfall house. 

the medicine is working for sure and I am 

totally at peace with who I am and where I am at.

I feel clear headed, even though I am drunk with 

the Love of Life.

The following morning I had the most peaceful 

conversation with

my father, something that I have not been able to do

since I am a little child, it was almost like the plant had 

talked to both of us. 

I wish there was an express track to initiation

because I realized that what i would really like to do

is be part of the healing side of things if I do this again.

It sounds a little preposterous I guess,

 I don';t think I need to take more medicine to get visions

or to hallucinate. i would like to feel what it's like

to be as ‘sober’ as I was and to be comforting people,

with music, with being there. I felt like I was watching

a really good show and I wanted to be part of it, 

not as a spectator , but as a participant,

 who helps make things right when they get out of balance.

I also felt like I need to do some Yoga ;-)

I found

that if i use my gifts, the smiles and thank you's 

I get are more rewarding than any kind of intoxication

a drug could bring me. That seems to include the 

medicine, so the plant refused to make me drunk or hallucinating because it was telling me that the high I was looking for was being high on life. Unlike a lot of those around me, I did not need that much healing. most of it I had taken care of myself in the last few years. u sit and meditate in a cave and smoke marihuana seeds and coca leaves, I guess u can call that an initiation if you use your time well. I will get back to the experience and would be interested what you think about looking for answers in plants that are supposed to communicate with us on DNA level.

Driftwoodstock Boathouse Crew

So after a day of rest and contemplation following the Ceremony Upstate I went out to fire Island with my friend Mark who has been going there for 25 years to look at this really beautiful house that he wants to rent for the summer. He is an interesting character with a funny smile that let's you know he's always up to something. So it did not take much to make me imagine a house filled with friends, jamming on the beach, really creating a little Burningman on the beach that lasts all summer long. And is not as exhausting to get to. Paying forward, leaving no trace behind and being a participant rather than a spectator should be a prerogative for every Shipping magnate, Captain, Pirate, Beach Looter or Seagull that is staying at the Driftwoodstock Boathouse. We might want to start implementing a local currency, the Driftwoodstock-Buck that is a currency that you can trade for your time and talents on a 'local' market. I am getting carried away. I spent the last two days trying to drum up people for the house, so my brain is a little extra jumpy. So much about Driftwoodstock, leave me some comments if you read this and if you click on the title, you can actually join the driftwoodstock  facebook-group. see u soon

Bato the Yugo Tuesdays @ Kafana

Listening to Bato the Yugo and his guys singing and playing serbo-kroatian 'schlager' at Kafana. Awesome poppy, folksy organic jams that just make you wanna know Serbian so you could sing along. Or maybe it's better not to know Serbian, after a while they are prolly just 'Schlager'.

 Next week I will bring my minidisc-recorder and give all of you who can't come out here a taste of what it sounds like. Give me a city that has Serbian, German, Cajun, BraZilian, Turkish, American, Puerto Rican, Italian, Chinese , Russian, French, Maroccan, Aegyptian, Korean, Japanese- run places all in a three block radius? 

My Block feels multikulti even for NY Standards.

The serbs have worked themselves into singing along with every song now, it really feels like hanging out in the Balkans here especially if u like zijebanica and chiwapi .

Been working with Bato on recording some of his songs here at my house and I guess I need to brush up on my mixing skillz, i got some badass performers coming thru and laying down trax these days. Well, u learn as u do I guess.

Disco Meditations 1

This weekend I went up to Upstate New York to participate in a Ayuasca Ceremony that was led by a Shaman from Putumayo, Colombia and organized by a friend of mine, Kathi who has travelled the world studying people's ways. Also participating in the healing ritual was an elder from Colombia, Taito Juan. The ritual took place in a beautiful old house on top of a gorge with a bunch of  really interesting people in attendance. One of them was Jim, aka DJ Small Change. He was going back early to do a gig at Studio 8 playing for a roller disco and was going to give me a ride back to NYC. As we were sitting in the sun by the beautiful waterfall that was right behind the house he mentioned that he might take a disco nap if he'd have enough time before his gig, after driving home. I heard myself ask, did u ever try to take a DiscoMeditation? We were both cracking up at the thought of it and decided to collaborate on a Project Album mixing disco beats with meditative music trying to see what it's worth.

Besides those plans I also decided to start a blog today, after returning to NY and after analyzing my 'interaction' with the plant. The plant let me know that I should pursue exactly the things I've always wanted to do , to not be afraid of letting my voice and music be heard. I will try to relate to you later how the plant has informed my thinking during the ceremony.

So in this blog I want to share my thoughts on music, spirituality, love, life , networking, and whatever else comes to mind as well as my riffing on live music in NYC and recordings that move me. Hopefully this blolg will document a journey as well as a life well lived, which is all I am aspiring to do at this point. I thank the Plant for giving me the power to recognize my responsibility to live my life truly independently in order to fully realize my potential to help, share and maybe even heal those around me. Intentions are powerful enough by themselves,if you throw in a little effort and focus, there is really no failings. only new beginnings. We know ALL the answers, but it's only when we are able to listen, that we can truly apply them. It is only after we apply them that we can go out and answer other seeker's questions without being asked. So in that spirit I would like everyone who ends up reading this blog to feel encouraged to share their opinions on my Ongoing BLAH, as I need to work on my listening skillz. I will try to write before heading out of the house to go hear music in NYC and/or after coming back home, in order to pay some tribute to the Blog's Origin's. till8tr