In 1992 on a remote beach in Thailand, I met Adam Freeland - a young pleasure seeker from England. A few mushroom trips later and he was listening to my early cassette tape recordings of Spiral Tribe and getting noticeably excited -
"This is what I want to be," he said with a cheeky face oozing teenage enthusiasm. "I want to be a DJ..."
Having full faith in the motto, "you become what you meditate on" (Adi Da), I replied, "you can be ANYTHING you want Adam Freeland..."
Back in the UK, my beau at the time - the legend Phil Dawson (an original Freeland Fighter) - picked up a pair of decks for Ad and he was away...no stopping him. Ad worked his ass off - not just to become a DJ, but to become THE BEST in his field. Ad is living proof that if you set yourself a goal and work hard at accomplishing it, you will manifest your personal life vision. The Freeland sound was born and break beat was about to kick-in a new religion.
Fast forward several years - fans, friends, wild adventures and booty calls in every city on the planet - and Adam Freeland has built up a posse of very committed and talented faith-full followers. The "Freeland Fighters" as we're often called - all members of *THE CULT OF FREELAND* - are an eclectic soup of rebel ecstatics. Amongst the crew are music journalist whiz kids Anthony Bozza and Matt Diel; designer/model Shane Rucker; female sci-fi book club founders Kirstin Lee, Lizzy Jordan, Megatron and co; directors Richard and Guy of Happy Worldwide; photographer Adam Lathem; producers Rebecca Lloyd-Evans and Steven Oliver; Crackle TV brainchild Josh Felser; a whole heap of artists from Seattle via Oklahoma; and a one eyed dwarf, that hardly anyone spotted, called "Tiny Cyclop". It was this melting pot of tricksters that head for Coachella's dance tent at 4.30pm on Fri 25th April, clad in gold and silver robes, lifting metallic helium balloons, shaped a mystical "F", into the azure desert sky...
WHAT THE "F" IS "F"? - was on everyone's lips ... FREELAND balloons dressed the sky for the rest of the festie and attracted a wave of new members to the cult. Initiates were embraced and asked "Can you feel it? - As soon as the fresh initiate was able to "feel it" they were given a gown and set to work the Freeland vibes ... obviously it isn't possible to discuss the esoteric depths of what you actually "feel" upon initiation, but if words could do it justice Aldous Huxley, William Blake and Shakespeare would all have written of it... and Einstein would have summarized it thus:
"The doors of perception x an infinite grain of sand + music be the food of love = FREELAND
Ya dig it? And so the Freeland Fighters kicked off Coachella with a BOOM! KCRW veteran Gemma Dempsey writes of it; punters youtubed it; pics were taken; hearts were shaken; and it all ended with DJ Freeland stage diving into a sweat pit of ecstatics chanting WE WANT YOUR SOUL! This was an electronica love fest...
The Freeland Fighters are spreading like an attractive herpes virus... before long, everyone will have "the feeling" rushing through their veins, licking along their arteries, caressing their neurons with a delightful whoosh of "F" ... just be open and it will come... like a receptive conduit, be available to the "F", let your heart get smashed wide open and... well... next year when Coachella comes round, be sure to locate the cult... you will never feel the same again.
For pics of Freeland Fighters Susie, Bozza, Shane and myself...
For an initiation... remember, "you become what you meditate on..."
*THE CULT OF FREELAND* - mission statement mysterious.
p.s. how amazing was Roger Waters!!! Did you feel it?
And now for the shallow star spottin' musings of a Welsh Minx @ Coachella ...
My slightly intoxicated and accidental celebrity star-spottin' kicked off with David Hasslehoff wandering through the VIP area with two young ladies, looking like a tanned Adonis who'd had one too many shots of Knightrider. He was followed swiftly by a very short Steven Tyler and his two babes who looked like they needed to get back to kindergarten. Owch! I was delighted to see the guitarist of my fav band My Morning Jacket wandering around back stage (best band on the planet right now), superseded only by two brief encounters with politco maestro heroico Sean Penn... then, there was the guy from that wicked comedy duo Flight Of The Conchords and I accidentally blagged a light from that bloke out of Good Charlotte, only to have Paris Hilton retrieve the matches when I was done... there were many more famous rock bands that I passed, but they all blended one into the other... Once upon a time you could tell the difference between Dylan and the Dead, nowadays they all look like a uniform trail of designer messy hair cuts and drainpipe jeans... and that's why it was so refreshing to see the FREELAND FIGHTERS breeze through the crowd like an orgasmic sneeze...
HIGHLIGHT OF COACHELLA: Jim James of My Morning Jacket giving his sense of the profundity of Portishead - a dream speech if ever there was one! Jim - u rock!
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Friday, April 11, 2008
MUSINGS - COLOMBIAN SHOCK!
EXPERIENCES FROM THE EDGE...
COLOMBIAN SHOCK
Backstory...
Imagine getting thrown in jail at age 21 after receiving libelous national press coverage connecting you to the death of a "talented Oxford University student" who you neither knew nor dealt any drugs? Apart from your mother's womb, this is the first time in your life you experience what it's like to be incarcerated: physically - by bars and fences; mentally - by aggressive strangers who are all at once victims of a cold world and violent perpetrators of keeping it that way; and, emotionally - you're burdened by gut-gnawing guilt for having potentially screwed your father’s legal career, your own legal career, the reputation of your family and, remorse, because secretly you really had a good time taking recreational drugs "recreationally" for a brief hedonistic, post-uni, let-your-hair-down, period of your life...
After many days and months in the slammer, fighting the writhing snakes surfacing from your deep unconscious, you paradoxically discover a freedom while in prison. In the midst of the shame-full ordeal, you feel re-born, but without having to convert to a religion for the privilege. A profound happening so exhilarating occurs, you could wank for the Olympics. A nine month sentence passes and you're released... Now obviously, the things you took for granted before – the scent of a rose, the sound of birds, the feeling of sand between your toes and men's bits massaging your palms - are appreciated a hundred fold. The sky is limitless with possibility and everything that crosses your path is for a reason. Fear has been faced, fondled, f***ed and forgotten - or so you think...
Not even a year later...
The Colombian boarder was a nightmare from hell. My post-prison journey in South America kicked off with a familiar feeling - traveling is, in my view, surprisingly much like jail. It's all about contrasts - peaks and troughs – stepping into The Unknown with no seat belt on, suffering endless trials, experiencing random moments of unexpected beauty waiting in the wings. Despite being an Oxford university Law graduate with a few clever quips up my skirt, I'm a geographically challenged Welshie with no common sense and a moustache issue. I seemed to blend in well with the hirsute Venezuelans packing the crickety yellow old school bus like a crowd of over-sized battery hens, just as I'd been able to entertain the lesbian fraternity in Her Majesty's Prison with comical rap performances. But I soon discovered that just as I had to adapt to the "prison language", my two rehearsed words in Spanish - "adios" and "cervesa" - didn't spark a cock-a-doodle-doo of conversation. I was in the trough part of an adventure.
Without warning the bus pulled up to the ominous frontier and Pablo, an Italian stallion artisan with greasy locks and eyes like a bull frog, hopped off leaving his luggage behind? Before I could fight my way through the throng of pot-stomached locals, the bus was bombing at high speed into no man's land..."Argh!" I screamed in an accent that would have made Tom Jones beam,
"Que Pasa? Donde? Adios? Cervesa?", but to no avail.
I reached for my "Learn Spanish in a wink" book and yelled,
"Donde esta la casa de Pepe?"
The driver's response to my obvious torment was to make a series of gesticulations which are impossible to repeat without diagrams and a blow up doll. With an evil snarl, he put his foot on the gas and we continued to bolt along the desert strip from the boarder. He was like Michael Schumacker on amphetamines. After fifteen minutes of gripping the moustache of the woman sat practically on top of me, we entered Maicao.
Without so much as a "ciao", I was pushed off the bus by several podgy hens and both my backpack and the Stallion's luggage was thrown at me from the roof rack onto the dusty road. Showering me with dirt, the bus skidded off into the distance and I found myself surrounded by scarred youths carrying flick knives and an over eager dwarf cab driver carrying a big gun. Shaking, I lit a cigarette - a prison tactic when facing sudden fear. Pretending not to notice my audience, I sat on my backpack and fumbled for the Lonely Planet guide. I read in horror the following warning:
'Don't stay even minutes in the boarder town Maicao. It is a lawless town. Killings are frequent. Get the first bus to Santa Marta...'
It actually felt worse than standing in the dock being sentenced to nine months imprisonment. Dumped at some sort of cross-roads, the streets were in rack and ruin in every direction. Grime littered every wall, pavement and shack. Several joints selling beers were filled with intoxicated villains. Carts and cars drove by churning up more dust. I felt sick. A tank appeared with a few men riding up top in military uniform, pointing serious machine tools at the locals. I put on my shades and lugged on the filter - if the police or army asked to see my passport, a regular request in such countries, I had no 'entrance stamp' - illegally in the country! Worse still I was a vocabulary-disabled "gringa". I didn't know how to order a cab, let alone explain my way out of arrest and imprisonment. It's in such moments the echo of parental sensibleness plagues the brain,
"You are so naive darling. You are so stupid. I told you so. What were you thinking?"
For twenty minutes, that's one thousand two hundred seconds of sitting in a lawless town illegally, I remained in position lugging cigarettes and nervously plaiting my facial hair. Suddenly - praise the Virgin Mary! - Pablo appeared through a mushroom cloud of tank smoke, his eyeballs goggling out of their socket like loose pasta shells. And he had the cheek to shout abuse at me with annoying Italian inflexion.
"You stupid f***ing gringa! You didn't get-a your passport stamped? You're in grandissimo problemo."
I was not about to take any pesto from this spaghetti-slurping, arty farty, twit.
"I'm aware that I have no entrance stamp you silly Wap. Now get in a taxi with me back to the boarder where you can explain in your self-professed fluent Spanish what happened. At least "I" salvaged your luggage..."
It worked. We hailed the dwarf back to to the boarder. Pablo argued with the officials and I got my tits felt for free by the dodgy guard in the cowboy hat. Then midget man drove us back down the same desert road towards Maicao, past shantytowns and enormous billboards advertising Coca-Cola and Nike to the world's impoverished. The army pulled us over and a bunch of matchstick chewing sixteen year olds equipped with M16s, demanded "regalos". Pablo was forced at gun point to hand over some of his silver jewelery and I performed a pee show on the desert highway.
When we finally drove back into Maicao, the dwarf professed that I'd agreed for him to take us all the way to Santa Marta - seven hours away - by car. Pablo translated. I denied. Pablo ranted. The dwarf shouted "$500!". Pablo's eyes started frothing,
"Did you a-negotiate with this dwarf, you silly woman?"
"Does the Pope use condoms you silly wap?"
Immaculate conception emerged in the shape of the bus to Santa Marta. We leaped from our cab into the moving getaway vehicle and the dwarf organized half the town to chase after us. For over a hundred meters on desert highway, a band of thugs relentlessly chased after our bus carrying sticks, knives and bottles. Dust splattered their faces and we breathed a sigh of relief as they disappeared into pea-size shapes on the horizon. The dwarf disappeared from sight before his gun...
A sign on the road read - 'Welcome to Colombia!'
Welcome to Colombia", I internally mused.
The next three months in this misunderstood country transpired to...transport me to some unpredicted peaks...
© G3 1996
COLOMBIAN SHOCK
Backstory...
Imagine getting thrown in jail at age 21 after receiving libelous national press coverage connecting you to the death of a "talented Oxford University student" who you neither knew nor dealt any drugs? Apart from your mother's womb, this is the first time in your life you experience what it's like to be incarcerated: physically - by bars and fences; mentally - by aggressive strangers who are all at once victims of a cold world and violent perpetrators of keeping it that way; and, emotionally - you're burdened by gut-gnawing guilt for having potentially screwed your father’s legal career, your own legal career, the reputation of your family and, remorse, because secretly you really had a good time taking recreational drugs "recreationally" for a brief hedonistic, post-uni, let-your-hair-down, period of your life...
After many days and months in the slammer, fighting the writhing snakes surfacing from your deep unconscious, you paradoxically discover a freedom while in prison. In the midst of the shame-full ordeal, you feel re-born, but without having to convert to a religion for the privilege. A profound happening so exhilarating occurs, you could wank for the Olympics. A nine month sentence passes and you're released... Now obviously, the things you took for granted before – the scent of a rose, the sound of birds, the feeling of sand between your toes and men's bits massaging your palms - are appreciated a hundred fold. The sky is limitless with possibility and everything that crosses your path is for a reason. Fear has been faced, fondled, f***ed and forgotten - or so you think...
Not even a year later...
The Colombian boarder was a nightmare from hell. My post-prison journey in South America kicked off with a familiar feeling - traveling is, in my view, surprisingly much like jail. It's all about contrasts - peaks and troughs – stepping into The Unknown with no seat belt on, suffering endless trials, experiencing random moments of unexpected beauty waiting in the wings. Despite being an Oxford university Law graduate with a few clever quips up my skirt, I'm a geographically challenged Welshie with no common sense and a moustache issue. I seemed to blend in well with the hirsute Venezuelans packing the crickety yellow old school bus like a crowd of over-sized battery hens, just as I'd been able to entertain the lesbian fraternity in Her Majesty's Prison with comical rap performances. But I soon discovered that just as I had to adapt to the "prison language", my two rehearsed words in Spanish - "adios" and "cervesa" - didn't spark a cock-a-doodle-doo of conversation. I was in the trough part of an adventure.
Without warning the bus pulled up to the ominous frontier and Pablo, an Italian stallion artisan with greasy locks and eyes like a bull frog, hopped off leaving his luggage behind? Before I could fight my way through the throng of pot-stomached locals, the bus was bombing at high speed into no man's land..."Argh!" I screamed in an accent that would have made Tom Jones beam,
"Que Pasa? Donde? Adios? Cervesa?", but to no avail.
I reached for my "Learn Spanish in a wink" book and yelled,
"Donde esta la casa de Pepe?"
The driver's response to my obvious torment was to make a series of gesticulations which are impossible to repeat without diagrams and a blow up doll. With an evil snarl, he put his foot on the gas and we continued to bolt along the desert strip from the boarder. He was like Michael Schumacker on amphetamines. After fifteen minutes of gripping the moustache of the woman sat practically on top of me, we entered Maicao.
Without so much as a "ciao", I was pushed off the bus by several podgy hens and both my backpack and the Stallion's luggage was thrown at me from the roof rack onto the dusty road. Showering me with dirt, the bus skidded off into the distance and I found myself surrounded by scarred youths carrying flick knives and an over eager dwarf cab driver carrying a big gun. Shaking, I lit a cigarette - a prison tactic when facing sudden fear. Pretending not to notice my audience, I sat on my backpack and fumbled for the Lonely Planet guide. I read in horror the following warning:
'Don't stay even minutes in the boarder town Maicao. It is a lawless town. Killings are frequent. Get the first bus to Santa Marta...'
It actually felt worse than standing in the dock being sentenced to nine months imprisonment. Dumped at some sort of cross-roads, the streets were in rack and ruin in every direction. Grime littered every wall, pavement and shack. Several joints selling beers were filled with intoxicated villains. Carts and cars drove by churning up more dust. I felt sick. A tank appeared with a few men riding up top in military uniform, pointing serious machine tools at the locals. I put on my shades and lugged on the filter - if the police or army asked to see my passport, a regular request in such countries, I had no 'entrance stamp' - illegally in the country! Worse still I was a vocabulary-disabled "gringa". I didn't know how to order a cab, let alone explain my way out of arrest and imprisonment. It's in such moments the echo of parental sensibleness plagues the brain,
"You are so naive darling. You are so stupid. I told you so. What were you thinking?"
For twenty minutes, that's one thousand two hundred seconds of sitting in a lawless town illegally, I remained in position lugging cigarettes and nervously plaiting my facial hair. Suddenly - praise the Virgin Mary! - Pablo appeared through a mushroom cloud of tank smoke, his eyeballs goggling out of their socket like loose pasta shells. And he had the cheek to shout abuse at me with annoying Italian inflexion.
"You stupid f***ing gringa! You didn't get-a your passport stamped? You're in grandissimo problemo."
I was not about to take any pesto from this spaghetti-slurping, arty farty, twit.
"I'm aware that I have no entrance stamp you silly Wap. Now get in a taxi with me back to the boarder where you can explain in your self-professed fluent Spanish what happened. At least "I" salvaged your luggage..."
It worked. We hailed the dwarf back to to the boarder. Pablo argued with the officials and I got my tits felt for free by the dodgy guard in the cowboy hat. Then midget man drove us back down the same desert road towards Maicao, past shantytowns and enormous billboards advertising Coca-Cola and Nike to the world's impoverished. The army pulled us over and a bunch of matchstick chewing sixteen year olds equipped with M16s, demanded "regalos". Pablo was forced at gun point to hand over some of his silver jewelery and I performed a pee show on the desert highway.
When we finally drove back into Maicao, the dwarf professed that I'd agreed for him to take us all the way to Santa Marta - seven hours away - by car. Pablo translated. I denied. Pablo ranted. The dwarf shouted "$500!". Pablo's eyes started frothing,
"Did you a-negotiate with this dwarf, you silly woman?"
"Does the Pope use condoms you silly wap?"
Immaculate conception emerged in the shape of the bus to Santa Marta. We leaped from our cab into the moving getaway vehicle and the dwarf organized half the town to chase after us. For over a hundred meters on desert highway, a band of thugs relentlessly chased after our bus carrying sticks, knives and bottles. Dust splattered their faces and we breathed a sigh of relief as they disappeared into pea-size shapes on the horizon. The dwarf disappeared from sight before his gun...
A sign on the road read - 'Welcome to Colombia!'
Welcome to Colombia", I internally mused.
The next three months in this misunderstood country transpired to...transport me to some unpredicted peaks...
© G3 1996
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
MUSINGS - CACTUS JUICE!
This is one of a series of articles I wrote under the umbrella title:
EXPERIENCES FROM THE EDGE...
CACTUS JUICE
Vilcabamba is an unusually tranquil village in the far south of Ecuador. It lies in the ‘valley of longevity’, whose inhabitants are rumored to live to one hundred or more. Andean hills branch out across the landscape like ribs from the rib cage. Deep greens, purples, browns and pinks blend one into the other, forward rolling down slopes in a multicolored leotard. A distant cloud forest hovers over Vilcabamba like a hummingbird controlling the weather patterns. This is a sleepy town that periodically stirs, then retires indoors for another rest. It's a stoners wet dream...I was a 23 year old adventure seeker, traveling South America for one year of intrepid exploration and casual hedonism before I would return to my native (damp) UK and begin "the career" as a lawyer, or run a record label, or both?
I found a cheap bamboo hut on stilts that had a ladder leading up to the balcony. I settled down for a month. I soon learned that many travelers never leave Vilcabamba, especially disciples of Johnny Love Wisdom - an American guru who encourages his devoted to get rid of their teeth and eat a strict fructose diet. I had no intention of plucking my canines. My adventure to this time warped place was specifically purposed - to study quantum physics books that I'd laboriously carried around in my backpack for three months, and to trek in the wild. Moreover, one of the promises I made to myself when embarking on this journey to South America - I must be always-open to spontaneous opportunities that might never come my way had I stayed in London and started at a Law firm straight out of university. I rapidly discovered that when one is "open", very unexpected arrivals show up. During my final week in Vilcabamba that challenge manifested on my doorstep in the guise of a shamanic guru (with a little "g")...and I received a drill on cactus exploration.
He shouted up to me from the bottom of the ladder,
“Am I invited to the gig then wild thing?”
I nearly choked on my joint from embarrassment...I was apparently singing, loudly - belting my lungs out to an obnoxious tune. He was all sweaty smiles. The scouse accent threw me a bit - I hadn’t met any Brits for a while and this thirty something, tree-hugging hippie didn't resemble your average shell-suit wearing kleptomaniac from Merseyside.
“Of course you can," I said, "Climb on up!"
I was suddenly face to face with a scraggly haired, skinny man with turquoise eyes shaped like fish-eye lens'. Before introducing himself, he lit a wooden pipe in his left hand and the flame illuminated a seven ribbed cactus tattooed across his perspiring chest.
“My name’s Ise – pronounced Izzie – Ise Real. Greetings fair maiden!”
Izzie's royal iris' opened up like the Queen’s curtains and his huge pupils danced like pissed court jesters. I burst out laughing.
“Izzie Real? Are you taking the piss?”
“Sir Real to you!" he winked, "I'm an organic shaman - in harmony with nature, balancing the forces, tuning on in, like.”
Izzie had a smile like an alligator - reptilian lips with a lot of side teeth. It transpired that this Liverpudlian herptile, wearing nothing but a pair of men's briefs, was under the influence of a powerful hallucinogen that, along with very old people, inhabits the valley of longevity. My ears pricked up as Izzie told me all about the cactus of the four winds. Trichocerus pachanoi, otherwise known as San Pedro, contains mescaline. For over three thousand years, shamans throughout the Andes region have used it for divination and healing.
Izzie's bedraggled, unimpressive appearance was at odds with the eyes - eyes that had crossed through doors of perception and danced in ballrooms of ecstasy. I gazed into the goldfish bowl of his soul and felt that had Aldous Huxley done the same, he may have written Brave New Inner World and grasped infinity in a single glance. It was an odd feeling - the knowledge that a stranger has power over your superficial world, a power capable of getting to the nitty gritty beneath the physical frontiers.
"The cactus gives you clarity, like. We shall take communion together at dawn."
We were really gonna scoff it together? But we'd only just met? I was a tad nervous. Sir Real sensed my anxiety.
“Georgie, the use of natural hallucinogens has been part of human experience for almost as long as..."
He stared into me...Self-conscious, I tried not to blink too many times. Five minutes later, he continued. He didn't blink once.
"Even the master of visions and the priest of prophecy – Nostradamus – was partial to ingesting the naughty nutmeg to heighten his awareness.”
Captivated by his charismatic, albeit greasy, hand gesticulations, I rolled another joint and urged him to continue...
“Sacred hallucinogens were placed on this planet to trigger human evolution. It's dangerous to consume their spirit unless you’re ready. Preparation is important."
Flickering in the candlelight, Izzie's alligator grin suddenly cautioned my enthusiasm. I felt the fear of pre-indulgence paranoia swirl my already lunched-out brain.
“I appreciate what you're saying but surely psychedelics can also make you lose your nut? Did God screw up then? What about those people in the 60s drinking vats filled with trippy liquid - mental hospitals boomed in business...”
Izzie scratched his dripping scalp and I noticed that the seeming extent of his drug-wisdom, contrasted with his ever-youthful countenance, didn't add up. I figured he must be older than thirty, but not a single grey hair groped his head...
“I’m fifty-seven Georgie.”
I spat out a smoke ring...
“How the hell did you know what I was thinking?”
“It’s easy to ride the waves of telepathy when one is attuned by nature to do so. Eating the cactus today wasn’t just to get high. If I wanted a simple trip I’d munch a tab of acid and stay home to watch the Simpsons. This is is a religious experience. San Pedro is sacred, like...It frees the soul!”
The phrase "religious" caused me to quiver and, reading my mind, Sir Real expounded...
“While I was in Mexico, a long time ago, I took the peyote cactus in the desert and an Indian guided me. He told me the white man goes into his church house and talks about Jesus. The Indian goes into his tepee and talks to Jesus."
Izzie's smile stretched beyond alligator proportions.
"It provides a religious experience, for those who are heart-erm-receptive, because it's a tool to communicate with the Divine. These psychedelics are sacred medicines.”
Hmmm? Reality check juncture. Have you ever experienced those moments when time stands still like a comedic statue? - I couldn't believe I was sat on a bamboo balcony, in the heart of South America, smoking pot with a bloke older than my father - a guy who nibbled psychedelics like sweeties and turned out to be an ex-con armed robber / reformed fully fledged shamanic doctor. And he was sweaty, with a reptilian smile.
Like a perfect salesman, Izzie convinced me...coerced?...attracted me to agree to...well...in five hours I was going to slurp the loopy juice with this rather unique scouse imp.
“Ok Izzie, you win. I’ll take cactus communion!”
Izzie chuckled a grin so wide, I could have reached out and touched his wisdoms.
“There’s no winning or losing twinkle toes. There’s only yielding and loving...”
Izzie disappeared into the night and I passed out. At five am I awoke to find a ghostly apparition at the bottom of my bed - Izzie was holding a torch under his chin.
"Snap snap...up you get, like?"
We commenced to climb the rocky, coiling path, which rambled up the mountain. Izzie beat a hand-drum on route. As we ascended, the dawn air became lighter and soon we hit a beautiful green plateau. Izzie led the way through some swaying trees and we passed armies of San Pedro all standing dead still like breathing corpses. I felt my tummy jolt in anticipation. We reached a clearing right on the edge of the mountain. Our spot afforded a panoramic of the entire valley.
“Time to down the holy nectar kiddo. Listen to the heart-beat of my drum."
Izzie removed a transparent bag from a secret pocket inside his underwear. He held it up with the excitement of a child. The liquid was a deep, dark, witch-face green.
It smelt and tasted vile. I pinched my nose and necked back the potent smelling, shampoo-tasting, Cactus of the Four Winds. Ugh! I wanted to vomit immediately but the heave turned into a heavenly floaty sensation, whereupon the drumming suddenly began to be felt from within me. While Izzie sat in lotus position as Buddha the Scouse, feather tucked behind his clammy ear, I spontaneously meditated and danced the next seventeen hours away in ecstatic union with Mother Earth. I didn't even know who she was, but by the end of the "trip" she was my best buddy.
It was early morning and two huge rainbows arched across the sky. Everything appeared to breathe, pulsate and blend together. As insane as it sounds (especially to a chick who had graduated with a BA/MA in Law and is, apart from occasional poetic rants and stoner sessions, predominantly left brain-attuned), I felt a universe open up inside me. I communicated with PLANTS! I morphed with the clouds. My right brain decided to join the party and then both sides of the brain took a vacation. While they were on holiday, I was given a glimpse of no-mind freedom.
“Izzie!” I was almost crying with joy. “There’s no separation between us in reality. We are simply swirling particles in a bleep of space-time. The animate and the inanimate are nothing more than a congerie of particle-waves – super-hologram images. Jesus wept!”
Whether he heard me or not, whether I spoke it out loud or not, only God knows? And as these esoteric secrets and long sought after revelations streamed through my consciousness, I felt the Grace of the Mystery that breathes you and me infill my dumb-ass ego-self.
Izzie's side teeth chattered away as he continued to feed me energy in silence. Occasionally, I would come back from "the other side" to an awareness of the heart-beats jiving from Izzie's drum. I was high as a kite, bird, treetop, cloud, pyramid peak or rig of very tall scaffolding. I was up there, out there, earthed and rooted all at the same time. The valley of longevity - a timeless place where cactus’ spend hundreds of years in the silence of contemplation - had given me a great insight to the edge of normality. How to communicate such a gift?
As night began to lower its charcoal cloak over the sun drenched hills, Izzie started to chant. I was breathing more deeply than I had known possible. At times my breath suspended...It felt like each breath was a gentle wave rolling in and I was the witness-surfer, gliding on the crest of Reality. Izzie kept chanting and for a moment I remembered that I was on a mountain with a strange-stranger, it was getting dark, we had no torch and home might well be a few hours away...
Suddenly, as if to challenge my pinch of concern, a dozen or so fire flies hovered above our heads. Izzie nodded to me and got up to leave. This is when one of the most spectacular, and never-in-a-million-years anticipated, occasions happened. The fire-flies led us down the rocky, winding mountain path. They simply did. This was no hallucination. A group of wandering luminescent pilgrims, shepherded myself and this content sweat-box, all the way to my bamboo hut...
Izzie had not spoken from the moment I consumed the San Pedro earlier that morning. And yet we felt totally connected. Words weren't necessary. Silence really is golden. And in the space of silence so much had been conducted. The chalice of my body-mind had received an overwhelming amount of love. And the indebtedness I felt to this crazy-wise psuedo-sage...well...
I bid farewell to the organic shaman and hoped to meet Sir Real again for another adventure. He gave me a big scouse-like squeeze, more like a moist rugby tackle than a hug, and accused me of causing the first hair on his head to go grey. I waved goodbye,
“See ya around grease bucket, I’ll catch you on the astral plane.”
Izzie Real went on retreat with Johnny Love Wisdom and I took the first bus to the Peruvian boarder, pondering the beauty of an ex-armed robber obsessed with nature. Then eight months later I bumped into him in Mexico...and that is another story...
© G3 July, 1996
EXPERIENCES FROM THE EDGE...
CACTUS JUICE
Vilcabamba is an unusually tranquil village in the far south of Ecuador. It lies in the ‘valley of longevity’, whose inhabitants are rumored to live to one hundred or more. Andean hills branch out across the landscape like ribs from the rib cage. Deep greens, purples, browns and pinks blend one into the other, forward rolling down slopes in a multicolored leotard. A distant cloud forest hovers over Vilcabamba like a hummingbird controlling the weather patterns. This is a sleepy town that periodically stirs, then retires indoors for another rest. It's a stoners wet dream...I was a 23 year old adventure seeker, traveling South America for one year of intrepid exploration and casual hedonism before I would return to my native (damp) UK and begin "the career" as a lawyer, or run a record label, or both?
I found a cheap bamboo hut on stilts that had a ladder leading up to the balcony. I settled down for a month. I soon learned that many travelers never leave Vilcabamba, especially disciples of Johnny Love Wisdom - an American guru who encourages his devoted to get rid of their teeth and eat a strict fructose diet. I had no intention of plucking my canines. My adventure to this time warped place was specifically purposed - to study quantum physics books that I'd laboriously carried around in my backpack for three months, and to trek in the wild. Moreover, one of the promises I made to myself when embarking on this journey to South America - I must be always-open to spontaneous opportunities that might never come my way had I stayed in London and started at a Law firm straight out of university. I rapidly discovered that when one is "open", very unexpected arrivals show up. During my final week in Vilcabamba that challenge manifested on my doorstep in the guise of a shamanic guru (with a little "g")...and I received a drill on cactus exploration.
He shouted up to me from the bottom of the ladder,
“Am I invited to the gig then wild thing?”
I nearly choked on my joint from embarrassment...I was apparently singing, loudly - belting my lungs out to an obnoxious tune. He was all sweaty smiles. The scouse accent threw me a bit - I hadn’t met any Brits for a while and this thirty something, tree-hugging hippie didn't resemble your average shell-suit wearing kleptomaniac from Merseyside.
“Of course you can," I said, "Climb on up!"
I was suddenly face to face with a scraggly haired, skinny man with turquoise eyes shaped like fish-eye lens'. Before introducing himself, he lit a wooden pipe in his left hand and the flame illuminated a seven ribbed cactus tattooed across his perspiring chest.
“My name’s Ise – pronounced Izzie – Ise Real. Greetings fair maiden!”
Izzie's royal iris' opened up like the Queen’s curtains and his huge pupils danced like pissed court jesters. I burst out laughing.
“Izzie Real? Are you taking the piss?”
“Sir Real to you!" he winked, "I'm an organic shaman - in harmony with nature, balancing the forces, tuning on in, like.”
Izzie had a smile like an alligator - reptilian lips with a lot of side teeth. It transpired that this Liverpudlian herptile, wearing nothing but a pair of men's briefs, was under the influence of a powerful hallucinogen that, along with very old people, inhabits the valley of longevity. My ears pricked up as Izzie told me all about the cactus of the four winds. Trichocerus pachanoi, otherwise known as San Pedro, contains mescaline. For over three thousand years, shamans throughout the Andes region have used it for divination and healing.
Izzie's bedraggled, unimpressive appearance was at odds with the eyes - eyes that had crossed through doors of perception and danced in ballrooms of ecstasy. I gazed into the goldfish bowl of his soul and felt that had Aldous Huxley done the same, he may have written Brave New Inner World and grasped infinity in a single glance. It was an odd feeling - the knowledge that a stranger has power over your superficial world, a power capable of getting to the nitty gritty beneath the physical frontiers.
"The cactus gives you clarity, like. We shall take communion together at dawn."
We were really gonna scoff it together? But we'd only just met? I was a tad nervous. Sir Real sensed my anxiety.
“Georgie, the use of natural hallucinogens has been part of human experience for almost as long as..."
He stared into me...Self-conscious, I tried not to blink too many times. Five minutes later, he continued. He didn't blink once.
"Even the master of visions and the priest of prophecy – Nostradamus – was partial to ingesting the naughty nutmeg to heighten his awareness.”
Captivated by his charismatic, albeit greasy, hand gesticulations, I rolled another joint and urged him to continue...
“Sacred hallucinogens were placed on this planet to trigger human evolution. It's dangerous to consume their spirit unless you’re ready. Preparation is important."
Flickering in the candlelight, Izzie's alligator grin suddenly cautioned my enthusiasm. I felt the fear of pre-indulgence paranoia swirl my already lunched-out brain.
“I appreciate what you're saying but surely psychedelics can also make you lose your nut? Did God screw up then? What about those people in the 60s drinking vats filled with trippy liquid - mental hospitals boomed in business...”
Izzie scratched his dripping scalp and I noticed that the seeming extent of his drug-wisdom, contrasted with his ever-youthful countenance, didn't add up. I figured he must be older than thirty, but not a single grey hair groped his head...
“I’m fifty-seven Georgie.”
I spat out a smoke ring...
“How the hell did you know what I was thinking?”
“It’s easy to ride the waves of telepathy when one is attuned by nature to do so. Eating the cactus today wasn’t just to get high. If I wanted a simple trip I’d munch a tab of acid and stay home to watch the Simpsons. This is is a religious experience. San Pedro is sacred, like...It frees the soul!”
The phrase "religious" caused me to quiver and, reading my mind, Sir Real expounded...
“While I was in Mexico, a long time ago, I took the peyote cactus in the desert and an Indian guided me. He told me the white man goes into his church house and talks about Jesus. The Indian goes into his tepee and talks to Jesus."
Izzie's smile stretched beyond alligator proportions.
"It provides a religious experience, for those who are heart-erm-receptive, because it's a tool to communicate with the Divine. These psychedelics are sacred medicines.”
Hmmm? Reality check juncture. Have you ever experienced those moments when time stands still like a comedic statue? - I couldn't believe I was sat on a bamboo balcony, in the heart of South America, smoking pot with a bloke older than my father - a guy who nibbled psychedelics like sweeties and turned out to be an ex-con armed robber / reformed fully fledged shamanic doctor. And he was sweaty, with a reptilian smile.
Like a perfect salesman, Izzie convinced me...coerced?...attracted me to agree to...well...in five hours I was going to slurp the loopy juice with this rather unique scouse imp.
“Ok Izzie, you win. I’ll take cactus communion!”
Izzie chuckled a grin so wide, I could have reached out and touched his wisdoms.
“There’s no winning or losing twinkle toes. There’s only yielding and loving...”
Izzie disappeared into the night and I passed out. At five am I awoke to find a ghostly apparition at the bottom of my bed - Izzie was holding a torch under his chin.
"Snap snap...up you get, like?"
We commenced to climb the rocky, coiling path, which rambled up the mountain. Izzie beat a hand-drum on route. As we ascended, the dawn air became lighter and soon we hit a beautiful green plateau. Izzie led the way through some swaying trees and we passed armies of San Pedro all standing dead still like breathing corpses. I felt my tummy jolt in anticipation. We reached a clearing right on the edge of the mountain. Our spot afforded a panoramic of the entire valley.
“Time to down the holy nectar kiddo. Listen to the heart-beat of my drum."
Izzie removed a transparent bag from a secret pocket inside his underwear. He held it up with the excitement of a child. The liquid was a deep, dark, witch-face green.
It smelt and tasted vile. I pinched my nose and necked back the potent smelling, shampoo-tasting, Cactus of the Four Winds. Ugh! I wanted to vomit immediately but the heave turned into a heavenly floaty sensation, whereupon the drumming suddenly began to be felt from within me. While Izzie sat in lotus position as Buddha the Scouse, feather tucked behind his clammy ear, I spontaneously meditated and danced the next seventeen hours away in ecstatic union with Mother Earth. I didn't even know who she was, but by the end of the "trip" she was my best buddy.
It was early morning and two huge rainbows arched across the sky. Everything appeared to breathe, pulsate and blend together. As insane as it sounds (especially to a chick who had graduated with a BA/MA in Law and is, apart from occasional poetic rants and stoner sessions, predominantly left brain-attuned), I felt a universe open up inside me. I communicated with PLANTS! I morphed with the clouds. My right brain decided to join the party and then both sides of the brain took a vacation. While they were on holiday, I was given a glimpse of no-mind freedom.
“Izzie!” I was almost crying with joy. “There’s no separation between us in reality. We are simply swirling particles in a bleep of space-time. The animate and the inanimate are nothing more than a congerie of particle-waves – super-hologram images. Jesus wept!”
Whether he heard me or not, whether I spoke it out loud or not, only God knows? And as these esoteric secrets and long sought after revelations streamed through my consciousness, I felt the Grace of the Mystery that breathes you and me infill my dumb-ass ego-self.
Izzie's side teeth chattered away as he continued to feed me energy in silence. Occasionally, I would come back from "the other side" to an awareness of the heart-beats jiving from Izzie's drum. I was high as a kite, bird, treetop, cloud, pyramid peak or rig of very tall scaffolding. I was up there, out there, earthed and rooted all at the same time. The valley of longevity - a timeless place where cactus’ spend hundreds of years in the silence of contemplation - had given me a great insight to the edge of normality. How to communicate such a gift?
As night began to lower its charcoal cloak over the sun drenched hills, Izzie started to chant. I was breathing more deeply than I had known possible. At times my breath suspended...It felt like each breath was a gentle wave rolling in and I was the witness-surfer, gliding on the crest of Reality. Izzie kept chanting and for a moment I remembered that I was on a mountain with a strange-stranger, it was getting dark, we had no torch and home might well be a few hours away...
Suddenly, as if to challenge my pinch of concern, a dozen or so fire flies hovered above our heads. Izzie nodded to me and got up to leave. This is when one of the most spectacular, and never-in-a-million-years anticipated, occasions happened. The fire-flies led us down the rocky, winding mountain path. They simply did. This was no hallucination. A group of wandering luminescent pilgrims, shepherded myself and this content sweat-box, all the way to my bamboo hut...
Izzie had not spoken from the moment I consumed the San Pedro earlier that morning. And yet we felt totally connected. Words weren't necessary. Silence really is golden. And in the space of silence so much had been conducted. The chalice of my body-mind had received an overwhelming amount of love. And the indebtedness I felt to this crazy-wise psuedo-sage...well...
I bid farewell to the organic shaman and hoped to meet Sir Real again for another adventure. He gave me a big scouse-like squeeze, more like a moist rugby tackle than a hug, and accused me of causing the first hair on his head to go grey. I waved goodbye,
“See ya around grease bucket, I’ll catch you on the astral plane.”
Izzie Real went on retreat with Johnny Love Wisdom and I took the first bus to the Peruvian boarder, pondering the beauty of an ex-armed robber obsessed with nature. Then eight months later I bumped into him in Mexico...and that is another story...
© G3 July, 1996
MUSINGS - TRIUMPH IN TIBET!
This is one of a series of articles I wrote under the umbrella title:
EXPERIENCES FROM THE EDGE...
TRIUMPH IN TIBET!
TIBET is land of saints and bandits, indescribable beauty and incalculable hardships. Its sci-fi landscape - countless snow peaks fringing Mad Max sand dunes; spongy emerald hills rolling into ocre-mauve rocky sculptures that bow to the ancient ruins of once flourishing mustard colored kingdoms; flat-stretches smothered in purple flowers and leaping bunnies that blanket the earth as far as the eye can see; the roof of the world where a brontosaurus crossing your path wouldn't appear strange; the land of snows where madly-sane tribal people with purple chapped cheeks and eyes that bark, all at once scare and allure you; a place where you can see dusty-rose mountains bounce like mirages on the horizon 100 miles ahead; a shambala in the sky filled with celestial turquoise lakes, the legacy of monasteries too rich to depict with words and all under the gaze of a Mighty Everest...
This special, mystical land is BREATH-taking...not least because it's mostly 4500m above sea level. Yep - you stroll, drive, run, wank, dance and play at the height of planes swooping over European skies. Every step is an effort not to pass out. Headaches, nausea, nose bleeds, fainting, fevers and fatigue are all common symptoms at this socially unacceptable altitude. Garlic is man's best friend. Oxygen masks, nasal sprays and intravenous glucose hits are all highly recommended.
My travel buddy Peta and I were at the last leg of our journey - we had spent six months capturing our adventure on camera from the banks of India's sacred Ganges, through the jungles of Nepal to the peaks of...this nauseatingly beautiful hell- paradise. The first six days of driving from Kathmandu to Lhasa saw Peta and a couple of German Buddhists puke and squirm. I managed to keep it together enough to shoot scenics for the show, while feeling like I was about to black out into oblivion.
We encountered a great test to our fear in Lhasa as we were surrounded by dozens of Chinese officials in army attire who chose to follow and film us at His Holiness The Dalai Lama's former palace - the Potala. We ducked into a tunnel - there are over 1000 rooms in the Potala - and suddenly found ourselves in the private chamber of the 13th Dalai Lama, not open to the public...then we got the hell outta there. The next day ten hours worth of our footage was smuggled out by an Auzzie lawyer.
Just before departing for the peak of our pilgrimage, Peta left to film the former palace of His Holiness Karmapa Lama. I had been feeling progressively weaker so I stayed back with a chamber pot and some garlic. Then, suddenly, I fainted on our hotel balcony. It is the first and only time in my life I've had my eyes wide open and seen nothing but pitch black. I now understand the term 'black out'. The next thing I remember, I was on a drip and breathing apparatus in Lhasa's Chinese 'hospital for the people'. For ten hours I lay in a bed wondering if I was going to die. No one spoke English. I had no idea what medication was being pumped into my veins. Too weak to struggle, I remember recalling the Great Sage Adi Da's instruction in his book 'Easy Death'. Had it not been for the peace that filled my body from that recollection, I swear my heart would have leaped from my body in fear. Having heard myself cock-confidently rap that I don't feel a shed of fear about death many times over in my dumb teenage life...when the possibility of it...unexpectedly hits you...well...I yelled for a chamber pot...My fear was probably escalated by the Chairman Mao clone having his oxygen treatment in the opposite bed and the young Tibetan girl a metre away, screaming because her spleen had exploded...
A day later and we begun the testing long journey across the size of Western Europe on a non-existent road. In my fragile state, nine hour days driving in the back of an oil truck with the smell of diesel creeping into my lungs, and then ending each day camping the cold nights by remote rivers where wild nomads attacked my facial hirsute...well, it was humorous endurance. They say that it's the journey that counts and not the destination...wrong! There are exceptions to the rule. I couldn't wait to reach the holiest of holy pilgrim sites...the infamous Hindu-hailed, Buddhist-beloved, Jain-jollied and Bon-boasted - 'Mount Kailash' - a Shambala hot spot circumnabulated by thousands of devotional pilgrims of every faith and creed, all striving for...enLIGHTenment...
Mount Kailash...OH ME OH MY! Kailash resembles the imaginary ice cream you want to lick forever. Standing in the spotlight - a lusty movie star on the red carpet - Kailash out-celebrities the backdrop of several awesome snowy peaks like a Masai Warrior's loin-tackle would a bunch of Japanese tourists in a police penis line-up. Kailash is Einstein, Da Vinci, Jesus, Mohammed, Gotama, Lennon, Mozart and Marley. Kailash restored my health instantly - like a light going ON...BINGO...
Cold, rain, wind, farts, garlic breath, altitude and attitude sickness aside, the sun set gloriously and we camped by a beautiful river that eventually flows into the Mother Ganges many thousands of miles away. The following day was spectacular - Sagadawa - Buddha's birthday. The energy was electric, even if Buddha did fail to show for the party...
(There were rumors Buddha was hanging out with the Beastie Boys and Richard Gere at a hamster fest in chutneyferretsville, but the rumors were soon dispelled when a rather serious German mantra-mumbling, born-again-Buddhist, announced that he'd been spotted with Elvis and Jim Morrison at a roadside cafe in Patagonia. The three legends were seen studying the esoteric significance of the double 'L' patterning the Welsh language. Apparently, Buddha sung their national anthem like a true Welshman, to the extent that the small Taffy community inhabiting this remote area of the Andes invited Lord Plenty to be their mayor...and several sheep grinned at the prospect...)
...The party was infectiously jam packed with hundreds of feisty Tibetan pilgrims and western voyeurs all waiting for a very tall sacred pole erection at the appropriate hour. Tibetan timing, as I soon discovered, is as accurate as a politician's promise. We waited patiently...and waited...for the enormous, flag'n bell adorned wooden phallus to stand to attention...but it refused to get a woody. In an attempt to drum out the dwindling energy, Peat and I ran around causing trouble - laughing with the limbless, sharing jokes with monks and missfits, kissing the brave...and eventually with a heave and a ho and a heave-ho...the pole went up...Wow! Powerful stuff...it didn't lean to the left, nor the right, which (apparently) is profoundly auspicious...
Having received the blessing of Buddha's birthday rod, we departed for our four day circumnabulation of Kailash with the knowledge that Buddha was happy - the one-pointedness of his heavenly todger being a cosmic sign that things were just dandy. The 'kora' was tough. We were to climb to nearly 6000m, sleeping in icy conditions in a tent that we'd rather haphazardly rented from two stoned imbeciles in Nepal with no front door and a shortage of pegs. We fixed my spoon to hold the guy ropes down and used Peat's sarong as an entrance flap. That night, I had the most powerful experience of my life to date - a heart-expansive, celestial run-in that is almost indescribable...
Suddenly, as I lay curled up in my sleeping bag, I lost bodily self-awareness. Any sense of "I" and "me" got swallowed by the magnaminous feeling-scape of the holy mount. The 'infinity-feeling' kept expanding until there was nothing but a pulsing vastness of blissful thoughtless feeling...and it didn't stop...it kept expanding to the extent that my ordinary association with the 'body-mind' disappeared completely - there was simply NO SEPARATION. This was not an intellectual assumption or drug-induced insight, but a direct, tacit and tangible first hand REALIZATION, in the present, as a living Truth. Paradoxically, "I" was all at once the limitlessness of outer space, my immediate environment, family, friends, the sound of the rushing river, the expanse of the entire Entirety in fact! I lay enveloped, caressed, kissed and fucked in an orgasmic 'witness position'...when gradually the Realization receded and I returned to ordinary feeling-awareness, it became obvious that in every breathing moment, I choose to dissociate from the Bliss of Reality, that it is an activity that "I am DO-ing", that I must take responsibility for...At this point, there was no way I could sleep! - I was pumped with so much energy I felt like I could run to 6000m. I left the tent and filmed the moonlit sky...it remains one of the most precious nights, etched into my heart...just me...standing there engulfed in the presence of...dwarfed in the presence of...alone, wired, alive, ecstatic! The chick who was laid up in hospital five days earlier was now at the roof of the world. And I had received an unspeakable vision, a gift, a blessing.
On day two, having not slept a wink, but still pumped with the 'infinity-energy' of my previous nights encounter, Peat and I celebrated by dressing up in...well, I wore a Chinese leopard-skinned whore outfit with four inch platform heels and Peat donned a black wig and purple heels. We climbed the hill in front of Kailash's north face and performed a trippy sketch where an Essex gal (Peat) and a Welsh slut (moi) have miss-read their holiday brochure and have somehow ended up in Tibet, thinking they were literally going to MOUNT Kailash...(Kailash cannot be mounted, only circumnabulated)...We prostrated in our fancy attire, twiddled our mala beads, sung 'Wham' songs, played an intellectually-challenged game of 'Scrabble' and drank bite-size Baileys before retiring to our tents for another night of freezing astral travel...Another day at the office.
The following day we climbed to the height of the Mount Kailash victory 'pass', breathless and exhausted, only to stumble upon a Yanky playing John Lennon's 'Imagine' on his guitar. This is one of my all time favorite childhood songs. I whipped out the camera and sung along between tears. Bright prayer flags blowing in a sublime breeze, Peat and I did a poem-rap to camera and then continued our 12 hour hike to a monastery. The destination, the journey, the climb, the presence...sweet as Grace...
After visiting the fantastic 'Guge Kingdom' - Western Tibet's spectacular ancient city - we bathed in the hot sulphur springs on the shores of Lake Manasarovar - the female 'Yoni' counterpart to Mount Kailash's male 'lingam'. Out of the blue, I suddenly felt a swoon of the mysterious presence that had intoxicated me at Kailash. That evening the same Divine Feeling that had revealed itself to 'ego-reinforcing George' completely overwhelmed me again. I was transported to the realm of all-expansive feeling and this time I felt the concentration of infinity rest at the heart. It went on for almost an hour. Afterwards I was charged with such an extraordinary energy, like an energy-mirror - I felt the pain of the ego-knot I tighten with my every reactive emotion, dissociative activity and separative motives. It became clear to me that there is nothing more important than consciously allowing this Mysterious Process space to unfurl its petals. I realized that I had a responsibility to develop the muscle of sadhana , to engage an ever-increasing dedication to spiritual practice in the midst of my hectic human life...
The penultimate day of our time in the wild - this inhospitable, remote, snowy, scorchingly hot, bizarre, bewildering land that is Tibet - and our camera batteries finally died. After driving through nine rainbows, our final capture was a double rainbow arching its hues over the too-beautiful-to-describe landscape. I wept. Whilst playing frisbee with some Tibetan children, vagrants in this no-map-place, the heavens opened...And silver light rained onto our gathering. We 'wrapped up' our filming - sixty hours of whacked-out weirdness. Speechless, enraptured, exhausted, blissed-out, sun burnt, snow burnt, blistered, gob smacked, god-smacked, joyous and jolted - Tibet has provided a teaching I shall never forget...but, having felt too much, I dare not return.
© G3 JULY, 2000
AN ASIDE
That the profundity and depth of revelation increases...happiness soars...and a sensitivity, tolerance, compassion and undulating desire to Realize the Divine Mystery intensifies the more the disciplines of a truly religious life are practiced with seriously kick ass, taboo-bustin', True Humour...well, those were the heart-seeds planted during my time in Tibet... That Realising Truth is possible even for a Westerner surrounded by material comforts and all the ephemeral illusions of the conditional world - that all of us have the potential to become Brightness Itself - has been rammed up my skirt and my clit has been quivering with excitement ever since...Tidy!
EXPERIENCES FROM THE EDGE...
TRIUMPH IN TIBET!
TIBET is land of saints and bandits, indescribable beauty and incalculable hardships. Its sci-fi landscape - countless snow peaks fringing Mad Max sand dunes; spongy emerald hills rolling into ocre-mauve rocky sculptures that bow to the ancient ruins of once flourishing mustard colored kingdoms; flat-stretches smothered in purple flowers and leaping bunnies that blanket the earth as far as the eye can see; the roof of the world where a brontosaurus crossing your path wouldn't appear strange; the land of snows where madly-sane tribal people with purple chapped cheeks and eyes that bark, all at once scare and allure you; a place where you can see dusty-rose mountains bounce like mirages on the horizon 100 miles ahead; a shambala in the sky filled with celestial turquoise lakes, the legacy of monasteries too rich to depict with words and all under the gaze of a Mighty Everest...
This special, mystical land is BREATH-taking...not least because it's mostly 4500m above sea level. Yep - you stroll, drive, run, wank, dance and play at the height of planes swooping over European skies. Every step is an effort not to pass out. Headaches, nausea, nose bleeds, fainting, fevers and fatigue are all common symptoms at this socially unacceptable altitude. Garlic is man's best friend. Oxygen masks, nasal sprays and intravenous glucose hits are all highly recommended.
My travel buddy Peta and I were at the last leg of our journey - we had spent six months capturing our adventure on camera from the banks of India's sacred Ganges, through the jungles of Nepal to the peaks of...this nauseatingly beautiful hell- paradise. The first six days of driving from Kathmandu to Lhasa saw Peta and a couple of German Buddhists puke and squirm. I managed to keep it together enough to shoot scenics for the show, while feeling like I was about to black out into oblivion.
We encountered a great test to our fear in Lhasa as we were surrounded by dozens of Chinese officials in army attire who chose to follow and film us at His Holiness The Dalai Lama's former palace - the Potala. We ducked into a tunnel - there are over 1000 rooms in the Potala - and suddenly found ourselves in the private chamber of the 13th Dalai Lama, not open to the public...then we got the hell outta there. The next day ten hours worth of our footage was smuggled out by an Auzzie lawyer.
Just before departing for the peak of our pilgrimage, Peta left to film the former palace of His Holiness Karmapa Lama. I had been feeling progressively weaker so I stayed back with a chamber pot and some garlic. Then, suddenly, I fainted on our hotel balcony. It is the first and only time in my life I've had my eyes wide open and seen nothing but pitch black. I now understand the term 'black out'. The next thing I remember, I was on a drip and breathing apparatus in Lhasa's Chinese 'hospital for the people'. For ten hours I lay in a bed wondering if I was going to die. No one spoke English. I had no idea what medication was being pumped into my veins. Too weak to struggle, I remember recalling the Great Sage Adi Da's instruction in his book 'Easy Death'. Had it not been for the peace that filled my body from that recollection, I swear my heart would have leaped from my body in fear. Having heard myself cock-confidently rap that I don't feel a shed of fear about death many times over in my dumb teenage life...when the possibility of it...unexpectedly hits you...well...I yelled for a chamber pot...My fear was probably escalated by the Chairman Mao clone having his oxygen treatment in the opposite bed and the young Tibetan girl a metre away, screaming because her spleen had exploded...
A day later and we begun the testing long journey across the size of Western Europe on a non-existent road. In my fragile state, nine hour days driving in the back of an oil truck with the smell of diesel creeping into my lungs, and then ending each day camping the cold nights by remote rivers where wild nomads attacked my facial hirsute...well, it was humorous endurance. They say that it's the journey that counts and not the destination...wrong! There are exceptions to the rule. I couldn't wait to reach the holiest of holy pilgrim sites...the infamous Hindu-hailed, Buddhist-beloved, Jain-jollied and Bon-boasted - 'Mount Kailash' - a Shambala hot spot circumnabulated by thousands of devotional pilgrims of every faith and creed, all striving for...enLIGHTenment...
Mount Kailash...OH ME OH MY! Kailash resembles the imaginary ice cream you want to lick forever. Standing in the spotlight - a lusty movie star on the red carpet - Kailash out-celebrities the backdrop of several awesome snowy peaks like a Masai Warrior's loin-tackle would a bunch of Japanese tourists in a police penis line-up. Kailash is Einstein, Da Vinci, Jesus, Mohammed, Gotama, Lennon, Mozart and Marley. Kailash restored my health instantly - like a light going ON...BINGO...
Cold, rain, wind, farts, garlic breath, altitude and attitude sickness aside, the sun set gloriously and we camped by a beautiful river that eventually flows into the Mother Ganges many thousands of miles away. The following day was spectacular - Sagadawa - Buddha's birthday. The energy was electric, even if Buddha did fail to show for the party...
(There were rumors Buddha was hanging out with the Beastie Boys and Richard Gere at a hamster fest in chutneyferretsville, but the rumors were soon dispelled when a rather serious German mantra-mumbling, born-again-Buddhist, announced that he'd been spotted with Elvis and Jim Morrison at a roadside cafe in Patagonia. The three legends were seen studying the esoteric significance of the double 'L' patterning the Welsh language. Apparently, Buddha sung their national anthem like a true Welshman, to the extent that the small Taffy community inhabiting this remote area of the Andes invited Lord Plenty to be their mayor...and several sheep grinned at the prospect...)
...The party was infectiously jam packed with hundreds of feisty Tibetan pilgrims and western voyeurs all waiting for a very tall sacred pole erection at the appropriate hour. Tibetan timing, as I soon discovered, is as accurate as a politician's promise. We waited patiently...and waited...for the enormous, flag'n bell adorned wooden phallus to stand to attention...but it refused to get a woody. In an attempt to drum out the dwindling energy, Peat and I ran around causing trouble - laughing with the limbless, sharing jokes with monks and missfits, kissing the brave...and eventually with a heave and a ho and a heave-ho...the pole went up...Wow! Powerful stuff...it didn't lean to the left, nor the right, which (apparently) is profoundly auspicious...
Having received the blessing of Buddha's birthday rod, we departed for our four day circumnabulation of Kailash with the knowledge that Buddha was happy - the one-pointedness of his heavenly todger being a cosmic sign that things were just dandy. The 'kora' was tough. We were to climb to nearly 6000m, sleeping in icy conditions in a tent that we'd rather haphazardly rented from two stoned imbeciles in Nepal with no front door and a shortage of pegs. We fixed my spoon to hold the guy ropes down and used Peat's sarong as an entrance flap. That night, I had the most powerful experience of my life to date - a heart-expansive, celestial run-in that is almost indescribable...
Suddenly, as I lay curled up in my sleeping bag, I lost bodily self-awareness. Any sense of "I" and "me" got swallowed by the magnaminous feeling-scape of the holy mount. The 'infinity-feeling' kept expanding until there was nothing but a pulsing vastness of blissful thoughtless feeling...and it didn't stop...it kept expanding to the extent that my ordinary association with the 'body-mind' disappeared completely - there was simply NO SEPARATION. This was not an intellectual assumption or drug-induced insight, but a direct, tacit and tangible first hand REALIZATION, in the present, as a living Truth. Paradoxically, "I" was all at once the limitlessness of outer space, my immediate environment, family, friends, the sound of the rushing river, the expanse of the entire Entirety in fact! I lay enveloped, caressed, kissed and fucked in an orgasmic 'witness position'...when gradually the Realization receded and I returned to ordinary feeling-awareness, it became obvious that in every breathing moment, I choose to dissociate from the Bliss of Reality, that it is an activity that "I am DO-ing", that I must take responsibility for...At this point, there was no way I could sleep! - I was pumped with so much energy I felt like I could run to 6000m. I left the tent and filmed the moonlit sky...it remains one of the most precious nights, etched into my heart...just me...standing there engulfed in the presence of...dwarfed in the presence of...alone, wired, alive, ecstatic! The chick who was laid up in hospital five days earlier was now at the roof of the world. And I had received an unspeakable vision, a gift, a blessing.
On day two, having not slept a wink, but still pumped with the 'infinity-energy' of my previous nights encounter, Peat and I celebrated by dressing up in...well, I wore a Chinese leopard-skinned whore outfit with four inch platform heels and Peat donned a black wig and purple heels. We climbed the hill in front of Kailash's north face and performed a trippy sketch where an Essex gal (Peat) and a Welsh slut (moi) have miss-read their holiday brochure and have somehow ended up in Tibet, thinking they were literally going to MOUNT Kailash...(Kailash cannot be mounted, only circumnabulated)...We prostrated in our fancy attire, twiddled our mala beads, sung 'Wham' songs, played an intellectually-challenged game of 'Scrabble' and drank bite-size Baileys before retiring to our tents for another night of freezing astral travel...Another day at the office.
The following day we climbed to the height of the Mount Kailash victory 'pass', breathless and exhausted, only to stumble upon a Yanky playing John Lennon's 'Imagine' on his guitar. This is one of my all time favorite childhood songs. I whipped out the camera and sung along between tears. Bright prayer flags blowing in a sublime breeze, Peat and I did a poem-rap to camera and then continued our 12 hour hike to a monastery. The destination, the journey, the climb, the presence...sweet as Grace...
After visiting the fantastic 'Guge Kingdom' - Western Tibet's spectacular ancient city - we bathed in the hot sulphur springs on the shores of Lake Manasarovar - the female 'Yoni' counterpart to Mount Kailash's male 'lingam'. Out of the blue, I suddenly felt a swoon of the mysterious presence that had intoxicated me at Kailash. That evening the same Divine Feeling that had revealed itself to 'ego-reinforcing George' completely overwhelmed me again. I was transported to the realm of all-expansive feeling and this time I felt the concentration of infinity rest at the heart. It went on for almost an hour. Afterwards I was charged with such an extraordinary energy, like an energy-mirror - I felt the pain of the ego-knot I tighten with my every reactive emotion, dissociative activity and separative motives. It became clear to me that there is nothing more important than consciously allowing this Mysterious Process space to unfurl its petals. I realized that I had a responsibility to develop the muscle of sadhana , to engage an ever-increasing dedication to spiritual practice in the midst of my hectic human life...
The penultimate day of our time in the wild - this inhospitable, remote, snowy, scorchingly hot, bizarre, bewildering land that is Tibet - and our camera batteries finally died. After driving through nine rainbows, our final capture was a double rainbow arching its hues over the too-beautiful-to-describe landscape. I wept. Whilst playing frisbee with some Tibetan children, vagrants in this no-map-place, the heavens opened...And silver light rained onto our gathering. We 'wrapped up' our filming - sixty hours of whacked-out weirdness. Speechless, enraptured, exhausted, blissed-out, sun burnt, snow burnt, blistered, gob smacked, god-smacked, joyous and jolted - Tibet has provided a teaching I shall never forget...but, having felt too much, I dare not return.
© G3 JULY, 2000
AN ASIDE
That the profundity and depth of revelation increases...happiness soars...and a sensitivity, tolerance, compassion and undulating desire to Realize the Divine Mystery intensifies the more the disciplines of a truly religious life are practiced with seriously kick ass, taboo-bustin', True Humour...well, those were the heart-seeds planted during my time in Tibet... That Realising Truth is possible even for a Westerner surrounded by material comforts and all the ephemeral illusions of the conditional world - that all of us have the potential to become Brightness Itself - has been rammed up my skirt and my clit has been quivering with excitement ever since...Tidy!
MUSINGS - ESOTERIC EPISTLE 2000...
"It is the most important function of art and science to awaken this [cosmic religious] feeling and keep it alive in those who are capable of it."
- Albert Einstein, The World As I See It
Latest developments. As Autumn creeps into a crisp post Summer swoon, the leaves of my mind are colored with an array of emotions. I feel into my personal cocoon of daunting change and witness a battle between 'struggle' and 'surrender' playing out in the heart-space gymnasium. Metamorphosis-moments are always painful, but it's the kind of pain that liberates - a yogic pain pushing one beyond physical limitations; a Tao pain revealing life paradoxes that release the grasping mind; an Autumnal pain whose often icy bite also brings the magic of color and transformed geometry.
I embrace this pain as a witness to my own cocoon ordeal. I see the yellows of ego-"I" crunch beneath my feet on the London sidewalk. The reds of fiery purification consume my attention. The oranges of holy chaos possess my crown. The browns of attachment and aversion eats at my gut. The ochres of passion squirm in my loins. The mauves of delusion stare at me from every bill board professing product-salvation. The fading greens of passing youth...I smile inwardly because I know, deep down in the depths of my...erm...consciousness, that it's in the midst of Autumnal alchemy that the lead of bullshit life patterns and reactions transmute into the gold of transformed tendencies and greater equanimity. Yep! It is only through yielding to the always-opportunity for seasonal change that real growth can be achieved. And real growth always awards an improved happiness.
Happiness, a fragile branch on the sturdy trunk of life, is the inevitable fruit-bearer for all who transcend (apparently) negative life concerns. The more one participates in the 'going beyond', the swifter one is armed to combat 'tricky stuff' that might ordinarily be perceived as hardcore hellishness or insurmountable life turmoil...hmmm...I feel like climbing a tree and tasting the scent of an orange.
So how goes the leaves of your mind?- Are they grasping to branches of (deemed) 'security' and 'safe' choices or do they let go, fall away, and prostrate at the feet of the Great Tree? Are we allowing the Master Giver of Wise-dom to release us from the bondage of presumed separation or do we slave to stay green in this strange and uncomfortable mortal illusion? Do we have the determination to walk the path of the warrior? Can we happily consent to changing colors and shifting shapes - the stripping away of old habits, the almighty fall through and beyond the well of our own created fears, the holy jumping off place...Can we truly fall awake in love, deeper and deeper, until we are Autumn-kissed leaves decorating the ground at the Master's lotus feet? Will we surrender to such sweet Grace?
Such questions are posed in the cocoon of my heart...And as potential butterfly wings wrestle with the pain of the clinging caterpillar - its tight grip on an assumed self-identity strangles the emerging flight vessel - the m-fields governing all of space-time's holographic intercourse shudder...to deny such flight, to ignore the beauty of ego-renunciation, to shun the prowess of butterfly expansiveness IS... madness!
There is a saying in Tibetan Buddhism - "What is like a smelly fart that, although invisible, is obvious?...Ones faults, that are precisely as obvious as the effort made to hide them."
In my cocoon of heart-wounding-insight, there is a G3 saying, rather more obvious than a Zen koan, but less crude than a Viz annual - "What is moist like a panty hamster that, although occasionally whiffsome, provides unimaginable bliss to all parties? -
...The Great Mystery, whose daunting Unknown is, in fact, Unqualified Ecstasy when suckled, nibbled, tasted, fondled, teased, tickled and f***ed senseless."
...Hmmmm? If any of you reading this feel that you're presently enduring a skin shedding, life changing, re-evaluating, ego-confronting, pattern distorting, cocoon-inhabiting, bout of POSITIVE disillusionment...remember that WE ARE, without a shadow of a doubt and a sneeze of discomfort, in fact - the butterfly, the fart and the panty hamster. Ya Dig it? ... Big up respect to the hardcore massive who jail break out of their cocoon of fears and have the guts to fly through The Great Mystery's theatrical, and very beefy, curtains...
GOD BLESS!
© G3 September 2000
- Albert Einstein, The World As I See It
Latest developments. As Autumn creeps into a crisp post Summer swoon, the leaves of my mind are colored with an array of emotions. I feel into my personal cocoon of daunting change and witness a battle between 'struggle' and 'surrender' playing out in the heart-space gymnasium. Metamorphosis-moments are always painful, but it's the kind of pain that liberates - a yogic pain pushing one beyond physical limitations; a Tao pain revealing life paradoxes that release the grasping mind; an Autumnal pain whose often icy bite also brings the magic of color and transformed geometry.
I embrace this pain as a witness to my own cocoon ordeal. I see the yellows of ego-"I" crunch beneath my feet on the London sidewalk. The reds of fiery purification consume my attention. The oranges of holy chaos possess my crown. The browns of attachment and aversion eats at my gut. The ochres of passion squirm in my loins. The mauves of delusion stare at me from every bill board professing product-salvation. The fading greens of passing youth...I smile inwardly because I know, deep down in the depths of my...erm...consciousness, that it's in the midst of Autumnal alchemy that the lead of bullshit life patterns and reactions transmute into the gold of transformed tendencies and greater equanimity. Yep! It is only through yielding to the always-opportunity for seasonal change that real growth can be achieved. And real growth always awards an improved happiness.
Happiness, a fragile branch on the sturdy trunk of life, is the inevitable fruit-bearer for all who transcend (apparently) negative life concerns. The more one participates in the 'going beyond', the swifter one is armed to combat 'tricky stuff' that might ordinarily be perceived as hardcore hellishness or insurmountable life turmoil...hmmm...I feel like climbing a tree and tasting the scent of an orange.
So how goes the leaves of your mind?- Are they grasping to branches of (deemed) 'security' and 'safe' choices or do they let go, fall away, and prostrate at the feet of the Great Tree? Are we allowing the Master Giver of Wise-dom to release us from the bondage of presumed separation or do we slave to stay green in this strange and uncomfortable mortal illusion? Do we have the determination to walk the path of the warrior? Can we happily consent to changing colors and shifting shapes - the stripping away of old habits, the almighty fall through and beyond the well of our own created fears, the holy jumping off place...Can we truly fall awake in love, deeper and deeper, until we are Autumn-kissed leaves decorating the ground at the Master's lotus feet? Will we surrender to such sweet Grace?
Such questions are posed in the cocoon of my heart...And as potential butterfly wings wrestle with the pain of the clinging caterpillar - its tight grip on an assumed self-identity strangles the emerging flight vessel - the m-fields governing all of space-time's holographic intercourse shudder...to deny such flight, to ignore the beauty of ego-renunciation, to shun the prowess of butterfly expansiveness IS... madness!
There is a saying in Tibetan Buddhism - "What is like a smelly fart that, although invisible, is obvious?...Ones faults, that are precisely as obvious as the effort made to hide them."
In my cocoon of heart-wounding-insight, there is a G3 saying, rather more obvious than a Zen koan, but less crude than a Viz annual - "What is moist like a panty hamster that, although occasionally whiffsome, provides unimaginable bliss to all parties? -
...The Great Mystery, whose daunting Unknown is, in fact, Unqualified Ecstasy when suckled, nibbled, tasted, fondled, teased, tickled and f***ed senseless."
...Hmmmm? If any of you reading this feel that you're presently enduring a skin shedding, life changing, re-evaluating, ego-confronting, pattern distorting, cocoon-inhabiting, bout of POSITIVE disillusionment...remember that WE ARE, without a shadow of a doubt and a sneeze of discomfort, in fact - the butterfly, the fart and the panty hamster. Ya Dig it? ... Big up respect to the hardcore massive who jail break out of their cocoon of fears and have the guts to fly through The Great Mystery's theatrical, and very beefy, curtains...
GOD BLESS!
© G3 September 2000
MUSINGS - LOVE IN LION COUNTRY...
In July 2002, I embarked on an adventure to shoot an extraordinary film in the heart of the Kenyan Masai Mara. The film is a true love story set in lion territory. Natasha – a blond, blue eyed Canadian girl, 24, spent five years living with the Maasai tribe after falling in love with a Maasai warrior. She and Saalash are now married with three happy, talented children. At the time of the initial shoot, they had a baby girl called Acacia.
What struck me as unique about Natasha's choice to live the Maasai way is that this primitive tribe of simple peoples live off cows blood and milk in the middle of the bush where giraffes and zebra, hippos, lions and rhinos roam free. Far from the comforts of suburban Canada, their home was a hut made out of cow dung with the shrill of hyenas howling into the night. Children covered in flies; women toiling in the heat to collect water and firewood from several miles away; men shepherding their cattle in the precariously wild African plains...all this patterned the scene as I arrived to film Salaash's 'coming of man' ceremony and, more poignantly, the final ten days before the couple would relocate to Canada.
In a country as corrupt as a politicians promise, Natasha and Salaash faced the harsh reality of where to best raise their child and build a future? It had been a heart breaking decision for them and I was privileged to enter at this critical time - a time to capture their compelling love story set against the backdrop of a vastly different cultural heritage; religious devotion; rite of passage; community spirit; and, the cherished ingredients of real contentment that connect these two lovers.
When Natasha arrived in the Mara - a mellow Canadian who had already decided that her life purpose was to be a mom and raise lots of healthy kids - she had no idea that her future husband was going to look, smell and feel like an African bush man...The moment they met, they both describe feeling physically sick..."Love sickness" universally translates. Over time, they began to learn each other's language, share stories and connect in a deeply feeling-space of extraordinary love and commitment. Unlike some of the tabloid-tarnished stories I had heard over the years - "Western chick marries Maasai Warrior" - Natasha and Salaash were so obviously star crossed lovers. And indeed, to this day, they remain proud parents, doting intimates and best friends.
Visually the Maasai are one of the worlds most colorfully adorned tribes. At 9, their ear lobes are cut and stretched and they hang decorative beads from each dangling lobe. Around their necks, copious necklaces, hand made for specific ceremonies, display the particular rite of passage age bracket of the Maasai.
I arrived in the Mara and was immediately transported into another world. It was Salaash's 'coming of man' ceremony and the moment he would have to sacrifice his beloved cow. On day one I filmed half a dozen warriors make prayers to the sky, then pierce a spear straight into the cow's brain. The cow didn't seem to struggle. The warriors gently blocked the hole with special leaves and the cow was down and peaceful. They peeled away the skin around its neck to make a bowl and proceeded to drink the blood straight from its body – fresh and warm. Immediately, the stomach entrails were removed for the women who were celebrating in a nearby enclave of bush secrecy...They ate it raw. I was gifted a freshly cooked giant rib and shared my meal with four semi-naked teenage boys in cow skin skirts who happily fondled my hair.
Other highlights during my stay were experiencing the happy devotion of these peoples to their God “Engai’. They seem to live a far more 'grateful' life than we tend to in the West. They also know how to let their hair down and JUMP! - House of Pain, this is your music video! The other amusing ritual is consumption of sausage tree cider - even the Maasai have their village idiot and mud hut drunk! Finally, we visited a lively witch doctor who had predicted to Salaash as a boy that something very important and WHITE would enter his life and make him travel. At the time, it was felt this would be some kind of albino cow...Natasha's arrival on the scene years later was, of course, spookily accurate.
As Natasha, Salaash and baby Acacia prepared to leave their tribe and homeland, we captured the tears of these ‘people of the cattle’ who are living a humble life, completely oblivious to what is beyond the dusty plains. For most Maasai who have never left their village and seen even a safari lodge - let alone experienced a sky scraper, burger joint or freeway - they are happy to reside in a difficult and dangerous environment rather than face the rumored congestion, stress and hostility of the city...One dark night, a week before our arrival, a woman’s scream was heard for many miles. A leopard had run into her hut and carried away her eight year old daughter in its strong jaws. The girl's body was never found but two dogs, a cow, some sheep and a goat also faced the same fate. This is not fiction but reality in the Mara.
The Maasai live each day for its own sake. They warn one another from planning ahead because they say - ONLY GOD KNOWS what is coming in the future. In this way they're very present with life. Most of their conversation is casual gossip, usually relating to cows, which are their currency and livelihood. Their religion is based on seeing everything good that happens as a gift from ‘Engai’ – the black god – and everything bad as coming from the red god. Superstitious it may be, but few Maasai violently squabble and they're relatively peace loving and gentle peoples. I recall a road rage incident in London upon my return and how much I craved the Maasai vibe...
Natasha is a remarkable woman who showed enormous courage by following her heart and embracing a way of life that would be unthinkable to most westerners. Her life with Salaash is one of tremendous love. Since returning to Canada, they have had another two healthy children. Natasha now runs a successful attachment parenting group in Canada that helps teach women the Maasai way of raising children close to the mother. The couple are presently adopting a fourth child from Ethiopia. Salaash has been back to his homeland, accompanied by an 84 year old Diviner and Natasha's brother who helped him build a number of wells for Maasai villages.
BACKSTORY
It was while shooting a travel show for TV in Africa back in 1999 that my Spiritual Teacher Adi Da first appeared to me in a dream. Later, I stumbled on a black and white bird wing in the Mara and intuitively collected the feathers and kept them in my travel diary. Seven months later, I returned from Africa. A year later I would meditate in front of an alter with the birds wing placed to the side of Adi Da’s picture. During moments of bliss-stillness, I started feeling my Teacher draw my attention to the feathers and to Africa in meditation. I felt the necessity to get back in touch with the young Canadian girl whom I had met and to see how her life had unfolded in the bush...Around the same time Adi Da began to talk about Africa and how important it was that the tribal groups get back in touch with the spirit of their ancient religious heritage. I knew that somehow I had to make a film and get back out to the country where my Teacher first started instructing me in dreamtime.
© G3 15th July 2002
What struck me as unique about Natasha's choice to live the Maasai way is that this primitive tribe of simple peoples live off cows blood and milk in the middle of the bush where giraffes and zebra, hippos, lions and rhinos roam free. Far from the comforts of suburban Canada, their home was a hut made out of cow dung with the shrill of hyenas howling into the night. Children covered in flies; women toiling in the heat to collect water and firewood from several miles away; men shepherding their cattle in the precariously wild African plains...all this patterned the scene as I arrived to film Salaash's 'coming of man' ceremony and, more poignantly, the final ten days before the couple would relocate to Canada.
In a country as corrupt as a politicians promise, Natasha and Salaash faced the harsh reality of where to best raise their child and build a future? It had been a heart breaking decision for them and I was privileged to enter at this critical time - a time to capture their compelling love story set against the backdrop of a vastly different cultural heritage; religious devotion; rite of passage; community spirit; and, the cherished ingredients of real contentment that connect these two lovers.
When Natasha arrived in the Mara - a mellow Canadian who had already decided that her life purpose was to be a mom and raise lots of healthy kids - she had no idea that her future husband was going to look, smell and feel like an African bush man...The moment they met, they both describe feeling physically sick..."Love sickness" universally translates. Over time, they began to learn each other's language, share stories and connect in a deeply feeling-space of extraordinary love and commitment. Unlike some of the tabloid-tarnished stories I had heard over the years - "Western chick marries Maasai Warrior" - Natasha and Salaash were so obviously star crossed lovers. And indeed, to this day, they remain proud parents, doting intimates and best friends.
Visually the Maasai are one of the worlds most colorfully adorned tribes. At 9, their ear lobes are cut and stretched and they hang decorative beads from each dangling lobe. Around their necks, copious necklaces, hand made for specific ceremonies, display the particular rite of passage age bracket of the Maasai.
I arrived in the Mara and was immediately transported into another world. It was Salaash's 'coming of man' ceremony and the moment he would have to sacrifice his beloved cow. On day one I filmed half a dozen warriors make prayers to the sky, then pierce a spear straight into the cow's brain. The cow didn't seem to struggle. The warriors gently blocked the hole with special leaves and the cow was down and peaceful. They peeled away the skin around its neck to make a bowl and proceeded to drink the blood straight from its body – fresh and warm. Immediately, the stomach entrails were removed for the women who were celebrating in a nearby enclave of bush secrecy...They ate it raw. I was gifted a freshly cooked giant rib and shared my meal with four semi-naked teenage boys in cow skin skirts who happily fondled my hair.
Other highlights during my stay were experiencing the happy devotion of these peoples to their God “Engai’. They seem to live a far more 'grateful' life than we tend to in the West. They also know how to let their hair down and JUMP! - House of Pain, this is your music video! The other amusing ritual is consumption of sausage tree cider - even the Maasai have their village idiot and mud hut drunk! Finally, we visited a lively witch doctor who had predicted to Salaash as a boy that something very important and WHITE would enter his life and make him travel. At the time, it was felt this would be some kind of albino cow...Natasha's arrival on the scene years later was, of course, spookily accurate.
As Natasha, Salaash and baby Acacia prepared to leave their tribe and homeland, we captured the tears of these ‘people of the cattle’ who are living a humble life, completely oblivious to what is beyond the dusty plains. For most Maasai who have never left their village and seen even a safari lodge - let alone experienced a sky scraper, burger joint or freeway - they are happy to reside in a difficult and dangerous environment rather than face the rumored congestion, stress and hostility of the city...One dark night, a week before our arrival, a woman’s scream was heard for many miles. A leopard had run into her hut and carried away her eight year old daughter in its strong jaws. The girl's body was never found but two dogs, a cow, some sheep and a goat also faced the same fate. This is not fiction but reality in the Mara.
The Maasai live each day for its own sake. They warn one another from planning ahead because they say - ONLY GOD KNOWS what is coming in the future. In this way they're very present with life. Most of their conversation is casual gossip, usually relating to cows, which are their currency and livelihood. Their religion is based on seeing everything good that happens as a gift from ‘Engai’ – the black god – and everything bad as coming from the red god. Superstitious it may be, but few Maasai violently squabble and they're relatively peace loving and gentle peoples. I recall a road rage incident in London upon my return and how much I craved the Maasai vibe...
Natasha is a remarkable woman who showed enormous courage by following her heart and embracing a way of life that would be unthinkable to most westerners. Her life with Salaash is one of tremendous love. Since returning to Canada, they have had another two healthy children. Natasha now runs a successful attachment parenting group in Canada that helps teach women the Maasai way of raising children close to the mother. The couple are presently adopting a fourth child from Ethiopia. Salaash has been back to his homeland, accompanied by an 84 year old Diviner and Natasha's brother who helped him build a number of wells for Maasai villages.
BACKSTORY
It was while shooting a travel show for TV in Africa back in 1999 that my Spiritual Teacher Adi Da first appeared to me in a dream. Later, I stumbled on a black and white bird wing in the Mara and intuitively collected the feathers and kept them in my travel diary. Seven months later, I returned from Africa. A year later I would meditate in front of an alter with the birds wing placed to the side of Adi Da’s picture. During moments of bliss-stillness, I started feeling my Teacher draw my attention to the feathers and to Africa in meditation. I felt the necessity to get back in touch with the young Canadian girl whom I had met and to see how her life had unfolded in the bush...Around the same time Adi Da began to talk about Africa and how important it was that the tribal groups get back in touch with the spirit of their ancient religious heritage. I knew that somehow I had to make a film and get back out to the country where my Teacher first started instructing me in dreamtime.
© G3 15th July 2002
MUSINGS - Freestyle Rap About The Mystery...
I free-styled this ditty-rap during a trip to the Middle East...
The ONLY thing guaranteed in life -
Other than cheap thrills, struggle and strife -
Is change, decay and dust to dust...
So living a sacred life NOW is a must!
A sacred life allows us to be
Ever PRESENT in this Great Mystery...
And it starts with positive disillusionment -
Coz we're full of boredom, doubt and discomfort!
And once we re:cognize that most of the moments every day
We're preoccupied with silly things that arise and pass away,
That we're suffering the bondage of 'apparent' mortality,
Then we can start to FEEL the pattern of The Great Mystery!
And Divine Humor will disperse all the stress-full reaction
As life takes on a mystical and magical satisfaction...
This is the start of the 'spiritual journey' or 'quest'
And it's an ordeal of de-LIGHT, a comical test!
We all have an incredible adventure ahead,
An opportunity to grow, to DO LOVE INSTEAD...
To transcend fear and step into The Unknown
To probe the depths of heart discovery, together, alone...
Leap into the void that is pregnant with possibility,
Fulfill our potential and be high on whipped-Qi
Here's wishin' us all a wicked journey together...
May we grow and outgrow whatever the weather...
May we climb to the peaks and laugh in the rain -
And whichever route we take - Choose the BRIGHT path...
Again!
I love YOU...
More than fish can swim gymnastics
More than the Pope increases the single mom statistics
More than birds can fly and G3 can digress
More than Bush will lie and The Dalai Lama will bless
More than baked beans make us fart and certain plants make us high
More than Batman is gay and onions make us cry
More than terrorists are twisted and politicians are impure
More than flags breed contempt and soil needs manure
More than naked men look silly and ugly women make men think
More than blogs are for nerds like me and tabloids sell a stink!
More than even a casual ditty can be meaning-full and more...
I bid ye love from an ecstatic poet-whore...
Dedicated to all those who have the guts to embark on the road less traveled...g3 xo
© G3 22nd January 2002
The ONLY thing guaranteed in life -
Other than cheap thrills, struggle and strife -
Is change, decay and dust to dust...
So living a sacred life NOW is a must!
A sacred life allows us to be
Ever PRESENT in this Great Mystery...
And it starts with positive disillusionment -
Coz we're full of boredom, doubt and discomfort!
And once we re:cognize that most of the moments every day
We're preoccupied with silly things that arise and pass away,
That we're suffering the bondage of 'apparent' mortality,
Then we can start to FEEL the pattern of The Great Mystery!
And Divine Humor will disperse all the stress-full reaction
As life takes on a mystical and magical satisfaction...
This is the start of the 'spiritual journey' or 'quest'
And it's an ordeal of de-LIGHT, a comical test!
We all have an incredible adventure ahead,
An opportunity to grow, to DO LOVE INSTEAD...
To transcend fear and step into The Unknown
To probe the depths of heart discovery, together, alone...
Leap into the void that is pregnant with possibility,
Fulfill our potential and be high on whipped-Qi
Here's wishin' us all a wicked journey together...
May we grow and outgrow whatever the weather...
May we climb to the peaks and laugh in the rain -
And whichever route we take - Choose the BRIGHT path...
Again!
I love YOU...
More than fish can swim gymnastics
More than the Pope increases the single mom statistics
More than birds can fly and G3 can digress
More than Bush will lie and The Dalai Lama will bless
More than baked beans make us fart and certain plants make us high
More than Batman is gay and onions make us cry
More than terrorists are twisted and politicians are impure
More than flags breed contempt and soil needs manure
More than naked men look silly and ugly women make men think
More than blogs are for nerds like me and tabloids sell a stink!
More than even a casual ditty can be meaning-full and more...
I bid ye love from an ecstatic poet-whore...
Dedicated to all those who have the guts to embark on the road less traveled...g3 xo
© G3 22nd January 2002
TV - FREE RANGE CHIX
How to describe this insanity? - George and Peat (that's me - The Welsh Dragon - and Peta, The English Rose...) set out on a 7000 mile adventure from the sacred banks of India's Ganges through the jungles of Nepal to join pilgrims at the roof of the world - Tibet. We filmed as we went and captured a happening-as-it-happens, irreverently spiritual, travel comedy...below are snapshots of the action...there's an entire series waiting to be edited when I get a free moment in LA LA land ;-) ENJOY the infectious energy and pass around...
George meets a stoned Baba!
A trailer!
THE CHIX MEET YODA
THE CHIX MEET THE WOLFMAN
George meets a stoned Baba!
A trailer!
THE CHIX MEET YODA
THE CHIX MEET THE WOLFMAN
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
MOVIES - The Mad Dash
I'm presently producing a movie called The Mad Dash which is a dynamo golf-rap-comedy. I read the script in June last year and was immediately hooked. Then I met mini Tiger Woods golf/rap prodigy Lil Jordan on the golf course - he's such an inspirational child star in the making. I'm so excited to make this flick, not least because of my history with rappin' and sport...Justin Timberlake is top on the list to play the role of Dash...more to follow...
MUSIC - WE WANT YOUR SOUL/THUNDER REMIX
My buddy Adam Freeland called me into his makeshift stew-d-o in Brighton and we yelled "We Want Your Soul" down the mic for a while until hoarse...this track rocks a wicked anthem to our hero Bill Hicks and the HAPPY team did a great job of the vid...Who would have thought it would hit the charts, get record of the week on Radio 1 and still be played now for its politico vibe - Ad - you are da man!
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For a wicked dance remix of Weapons' Thunder by Danny Griffin of Rave Dayz DJ Daisy fame...and his trippy live visuals:
"> ">
">">
For a wicked dance remix of Weapons' Thunder by Danny Griffin of Rave Dayz DJ Daisy fame...and his trippy live visuals:
"> ">
WE WANT YOUR SOUL!!!
My buddy Adam Freeland called me into his makeshift stew-d-o in Brighton and we yelled "We Want Your Soul" down the mic for a while until hoarse...this track rocks a wicked anthem to our hero Bill Hicks and the HAPPY team did a great job of the vid...Who would have thought it would hit the charts, get record of the week on Radio 1 and still be played now for its politico vibe - Ad - you are da man!
">
For a wicked dance remix of Weapons' Thunder by Danny Griffin of Rave Dayz DJ Daisy fame...and his trippy live visuals:
">
">
For a wicked dance remix of Weapons' Thunder by Danny Griffin of Rave Dayz DJ Daisy fame...and his trippy live visuals:
">
COMEDY - MY ALTER EGO - MAVYS DAVIES...
Mavys Davies happened spontaneously one day after a Weapons photo shoot. I was feeling feisty and seduced a sexy teenager into creating a microphone out of a cucumber. Welsh people are known in the UK as "Taffy" so Mavys decided to have her own TV show called "Taffy TV". This was MD's first band interview. Thhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifere is a show she did with 'The Naked Chef' that I will post shortly...triple X...I promise. This episode needs a Brazilian, but for one take and zero prep it aint bad! Watch out - Mavys is STEAMINGLY HOT!
Taffy TV!
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For a more licentious Mavys Davies in her show "The Naked Chef' see:
http://www.youtube.com/user/TaffyTV
Taffy TV!
">
For a more licentious Mavys Davies in her show "The Naked Chef' see:
http://www.youtube.com/user/TaffyTV
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