No. 15

There are basically two methods by which I create a record, I’ve been at it for years so I’m relatively aware at this point that I can either cobble together a bunch of older songs plus some newer songs that seem to resonate in ways with the older ones and get a vibe going etc. etc., or: I write an entire record front to back at a feverish pace within two months wherein all the songs are basically part of one large song that is of the moment as it were. This later method is always preferred. Furr was done this way, Goldwing and Future Jokes as well. It’s the difference between the left brain and right brain, the logical progression and the flow-state, the physical vs. the astral.

Anyway, so I’ve been in the midst of doing just this for the last two months. Feverish writing, compounded by the fact that my wife and I just had a new kid, a late in life edition to the family, very premeditated replete with tantric planning and microcosmic energy work for those who know something about prana. The writing of the record coincided with an Event of Import, what I call an omen and in fact not only did it kick start the writing of said record but it most likely was a harbinger of deeper more important processes going on out there on different planes and such.

Those of you reading this are probably either fans or acquaintances or just looky-loos but since I’ve got very little skin in the game as far as this blog goes, I’ll describe the event in detail but first a side note: let me say that my sister Eydie last year published this banger of a fantasy novel called Tales from Wakken Wood, a wild complex multi-world kind of weirdness in which she posits the existence of this place called the Inner Mountains. It’s not necessarily central to the story and could be an echo of later sequels (?) but it was intriguing and I couldn’t stop thinking about it for some time, a kind of hidden realm of immense mountains that would at times make themselves visible to the naked eye behind the physical mountains but regardless were always there, invisible. One of the new songs retains this title.

It was late, maybe 10 pm. I’d been sitting in a dark room doing Kriya when I heard a loud bang like something had hit the side of our house. I jumped up and went in the kitchen which has a large window that looks out onto the forest. My wife was there in near darkness but for the stove light. She was in the last trimester of pregnancy and was making tea. ‘Oh my gosh,’ she said as I entered. She gazed at the window where you could only just see a few feet out on account of the dim porch light that hung nearby. A giant white Owl had landed on the rickety wooden feeder sitting on a pole on the back deck mere feet from the window peering in at us. Its eyes shone glassy, black as the void and it stared deeply first into my wife’s eyes and then mine. Eerie. The creature was large and its claws were flexing upon the small wooden structure like it might burst the wooden feeder. My first reaction was awe and then I said, ‘Did she call that thing in?’ I looked at my wife’s belly where my daughter grew from primordial particles and pure light and she laughed, of course you’d think that… And then the owl spread its wings and beat the air and leapt from its perch and flew off. I’ve spent quite a bit of time in the bush bow hunting and fishing but that’s the closest I’ve ever been to interacting with an owl. The event was disconcerting.

I was inclined to consult the digital oracle to ask what a visit from an owl means. The answers were many and diverse, nearly antithetical in many cases, from death and witchcraft to wisdom and insight, they appear as messengers and harbingers of shifts and transformations and etc. etc. I guess mankind hasn’t reached consensus on the critter yet, though I have my own theories based on my own journeys and astral mishaps. (a post on my ill-fated flirtation with shamanism may be in the works at least theoretically…)

But so after that night I began writing songs at fever pitch which I hadn’t done for several years, often working on two and three at a time, plunking on the old piano and delving into weird tunings and guitar folderal. A creepy old wooden icon plaque of St Teresa I’d found at a junk shop and was compelled to buy became central to the process for certain reasons and hung in the room as I wrote. I demo tracked everything and kept as much first take as possible to capture the magic. To be honest I haven’t really wanted to write music for several years, but the messenger compelled me.

One of the owl visitation memes I’d read was that they were reminders to seek inner awareness, to really focus on the nuts and bolts of inner thought, the field of thinking/probabilities as the wave form collapses and the material illusion condenses, which is what the last year has been, watching as the infant forms, the energies knit together and the material illusion takes shape. Or maybe the owl was just helping, guiding the new being to her home in a new body. Anyway, juries out whether I’ll have the juice to let these new songs see the light of day…