Cosmic Consciousness in a rustic bar in Wolcott, CT

Prelude:

"Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such." - Henry Miller

Some day, I may spend some time crafting an appreciation for the likes of authors William S. Burroughs and Henry Miller, but for now, I mostly only know what I've heard other people say about these folks and their writings.  My sense is that a very important window into a pantheistic perspective can be gleaned from their writings, a visceral awakening into the vision that "God is EVERYWHERE".

Ok, now that I've used the word "God" for the first time in my blogging adventures let me be clear about exactly what I mean.  I'll start with what I don't mean.   None of the named gods of old and new—Yahweh, Allah, Zeus, Thor, Ahura Madza, Brahma, etc.—will suffice.   I long since given up on the image of the bearded man in the sky and I have evolved out of my Catholic upbringings to be much more of a quester when it comes to theology.

I have a genuine curiosity about the nature of reality, the nature of human beings, and the nature of all that might be considered "me".  It's the first of these curiosities that immediately inspires me to mention the word "God" because, for me, 'God' means "EVERYTHING".  And when I mean EVERYTHING, I really try to mean EVERYTHING.  But I find it's hard to even imagine just what the heck 'EVERYTHING' is, and even harder to imagine what it isn't!

But I try, and I fail.
Maybe you think 'God' and you think 'good'. You think 'good' and you usually don't think of 'my yucky toe-fungus'.   
But your toe-fungus is God, too!

And that's where I lose perspective a lot of the time.   I admit I have trouble giving equal attention to the toe fungi, the wars, the smelly farts, the heroin addictions, the Nazis, the pierced penises, the sufferings of the sick and impoverished, the nuclear weapons, the chapped lips, the 'getting your arms ripped off by agricultural machinery', etc. when I'm considering the all that is All.  Of course, this whittles down my God to a fraction of Her infinitude.

Let me quickly say that although I try and include these retched things into my pantheistic sense of "God", that does NOT mean, by any stretch, that I condone, support, or tolerate all the evils, atrocities, and genuinely unpleasant things in the world.  In fact, I believe we all—as beings of such extraordinary potential—make it our missions to uplift the world.  May we all work hard to create a more enlightened, just, and beautiful world.  May we minimize all suffering.

So why do I need to pay attention to and mention the terrible things in my visioning of "God"?  It is so that I may come to realize and recognize that all of those awful, funky things are there - exactly 'where' they are, exactly 'when' they are.

Here is a piece of God: there is some toe fungus, hanging out on a foot, of a guy, in the shower, on a planet, by a Sun, in a vast spiral galaxy called Milkyway, a dozen-plus billion years out in space-time from the Big Bang, at 17:54, local daylight time.


Movement I:Allemande

Thanksgiving came along this week and so I found myself traveling southwesterly, away from my lovely abode in Jamaica Plain, MA, towards my place of birth, Connecticut.   The timing was just right and I stumbled upon an evening of cosmic consciousness in what my (often faulty) God-seeking agents would perceive as the most unlikely of places for such a thing: a smoky, rustic bar nestled away in the low, glacier-carved mountains of Wolcott, CT, a place called: the Lily Pad Lounge .

However, there was a glow around this experience from the very beginning.   I arrived in Plainville, CT around 3pm.    This gave me plenty of time to catch up with the parents, eat, and strum a few chords on my guitar.   At ten of 8, Kyle (my brother), Tara (his then-fiancee), and I headed off towards Bristol to pick up my cousin Brian and proceed to the Lily Pad Lounge.  We were to see my old buddies from the band Chillum perform an evening of live music.    During the car ride I was blessed with some good laughs, a lesson on 'public speaking' from my newly bearded cousin, and much pre-rockout rockin' out, courtesy of Kyle's good musical tastes.

At the end of this joyous ride was a host of unforeseen challenges.  It suddenly got very foggy.  As we ambled around with hobbled visibility, we came across what I learned later was a toppled oil truck.  The road to the show was completely blocked and we had to feel our away through backroads to the elusive location on the top of Mt. Southington.   Eventually the fog cleared to reveal a large building accompanied by a serene lake.   Driving into the lot and witnessing this haloed scene, I was immediately charmed.

From the outside, the Lily Pad Lounge appeared more like some mountaintop Boyscout clubhouse than a lame bar.    I was the first to go inside and explore, leaving the smokers trailing behind me by the amount of time is takes to finish a cigarette.   Rounding the corner of the creaky wooden hall, I discovered a scene that looked more like outer Mongolia than Connecticut!   There was an old rocky fireplace; dead fish & large mammal heads on the walls; filthy, fur-covered men with squinty eyes, speaking in strange tongues; high-peaked, snow-covered mountains in the distance and... ok, now I'm making things up, but the vibe in this room was certainly tickling my third eye into producing such  visions.

I wandered around until eventually found my old bandmates, Eddie Q (Andy), Johnny J (Damon), Romo (Adam), and Tico (Rob). After much loving and laughing and catching up on new tattoos, bugged out dreams, and such, they took to the stage.     I hadn't danced in quite a while. My body, anticipating what was to come, immediately began stretching itself out, oiling up all of the gears. The first tune was the classic Steppenwolf favorite, "Magic Carpet Ride". I immediately grafted each cell of my body to every sound that flew out of their minds, bodies, and amps. They rocked out so hard!!! And so, consequently, did I. I was very grateful to be in the presence of such high quality rock to dance to. I love love love LOVE dancing. I think I asked the bartender for 14 glasses of water before she finally just gave me my own pitcher.

The first set ended and I went and had a very spiritually-oriented conversation with Rob Hamm out on the Christmas-light, illumined gazebo.   My relationship with Rob has become one of my life's icons for the kind of 'looking for the God in everything' I keep talking about here. (see upcoming post on Rob Hamm and my introduction to improvisation). We talked about music as healing, as the unifying force, as our salvation.   I love it when two people can inspire each other into such hopeful states. By the end of the conversation, we were in love with everything, even our smelly farts.

Two songs into the second set Kyle decided we bring our adventure to the Lily Pad Lounge to a close. I reluctantly followed him to the parking lot, sputtering along with indecision. I eventually found myself in the car, coasting out into the fog with Brian's soberness behind the wheel.   I wasn't sure if it was right for me to leave.   Thoughts churned in my mind: "I'm having fun rocking out and dancing and I've missed these guys, but I want to wake up early and 'get some shit done', blah blah blah". Well, no help there "up in my head"... but from somewhere lower in my body there was a very clear desire coming through: "Get out of the car and into the fog!"

 So I did.
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The car slid away, swallowed up by the foggy nothingness.  I was left, enveloped in a Great Silence.

At first, the wind was the only thing that was 'allowed' to softly speak.   Even the slightest of body movement was far too loud for the part I was to play in this Music.  I was motionless, holding my breath.  

 Then the moon shone, ambient, far off on the other side of the fog, like a soft drone.

I slowly climbed up a stone wall to energetically engage with a pine tree from a different level, but slipped quickly off the slick top.   I landed perfectly on two feet with my arms-hands-fingers outstretched and my whole body rigid and grounded.   Any other landing would have completely violated the Music as disrespectfully as a violent, rock cymbal crash amidst a gentle sea of pianissimo violins.   For this, I was grateful.    I believe that is was cause of the Music that the heightened potential of gracefulness canceled out the other, more painful versions of that incredible landing.   I smiled and stayed solid, feeling a bit like Bruce Lee.

Eventually, my heart expanded and I began to sing.   It came through me like my waterfall, effortless and inevitable. Over and over again, my prayer was set into motion:

"I pray that you see One.

Precious holy tethers- a breathing connection,

Unfurling inward a notion of hope in an ocean of opalish eyes."

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Finale:

Splashing around, I'm walking through water, singing like water, listening to the water fall into the sewer, playing with time like water by recording the sewer sounds and the prayer on a phone message that I sent to myself in the "future".    Otherwise timeless, it All happened at once.

The rest of the night, including my return to the Lily Pad Lounge, might make better paintings than words.

I'll conclude with their future titles.

On her hips, "Music is life"/ "Life is Music".

My Slow-motion, broken-drumstick catch: minus the causality.

Geometrically rearranged body motion to Tool's "46 & 2".

Tasting the volumes between me & the moon.