Greetings, One & All~
I trust this finds you all in good health and spirits, enjoying the blessings of rain in your corner of the global garden, as we are here in Northern Sonora. We get most of our scant annual precipitation during our summer monsoon season in the form of spectacular thunderstorms, and rain is always a blessing here in the desert no matter what relatively inconsequential activities of ours it may inconvenience.
photo by Shery Christopher
In Spirit
This has been a season of endings, transitions and new beginnings for your humble narrator: a time to nurture what continues to grow and harvest what has come to fruition; to fix what is broken and relinquish what is beyond repair; to bid farewell to all that has departed and sweep the threshold clean for all that is arriving; a time to reclaim personal power and recharge creative engagement; to return to center, restore balance, and refocus energy on all that endures and all that is yet to be.
photo by Nancy Smith-Jones
In the World
One creative journey that has endured for a quarter-century is my collaboration with R. Carlos Nakai. Awakening the Fire, the latest sonic pebble we’ve tossed into the cosmic pool, continues to ripple back in shimmering waves of appreciation and interpretation, as in this bit of scintillating prose by Brenda Williams, creator of The Triad Wave, in which she writes with delightfully esoteric specificity:
As I began listening to the CD Awakening the Fire, I allowed it to instantly merge with my field that holds The Triad Wave. As the experience continued I noticed the following:
First, I have always been a fan of Nakai’s music since hearing Canyon Trilogy many years ago. This CD takes me into an immediate resonant field of expanded awareness as it is engaged. While it allows movement into more refined awareness, the percussion rhythms created by Will hold the field steady and well grounded for pristine exploration. The heart intelligence expands to reach its highest and most stable place of knowing in a comfortable and secure way. The field created is in full resonance with the new planetary grid allowing movement in all directions. The varied percussion rhythms move through various physical resets to allow form to recalibrate easily to its individual and unique design. I LOVE IT!!!!! My personal favorites are The Fountain, Convergence, Oasis and Endless Journey.
photo by Christian Bothner
I’m not sure what it all means (they don’t call me Professor LoTech for nothing–I’m just the drummer, after all!) but you can put it all in cosmic context with a visit to
http://earthproject777.com/
Awards
Awakening the Fire has been officially submitted for the 56th Annual GRAMMY® Awards; we welcome your positive energy and voting support in that endeavor.
Also, the song First Morning from Awakening the Fire has been nominated for an Indian Summer Music Award, for which we likewise welcome your support. This is particularly gratifying in that First Morning was literally the very first track RC and I recorded on the very first day of the AtF sessions; evidently, the ISMA Nominating Committee heard the same first-take magic that we felt in laying it down!
Press
Awakening the Fire has received a glowing review from noted music journalist Bill Binkelman, long-time writer for New Age Reporter and currently opining on all matters musical for Playlist. Enjoy Bill’s succinct yet eloquent wordsmithing at
http://www.bluetoad.com/publication/?i=167822&p=85
(Be sure to use the small yellow scroll bar to the right of the screen to zoom in on his article, next to the AtF cover art.)
Radio
On Tuesday August 13th at 9 PM EST yours truly will be interviewed live on-air by Dan Baynes (aka, The Cable Man on Radio) on WNTI 91.9 FM Public Radio for the World Rhythms show. The link for live streaming is
www.wnti.org
The new Jeff Greinke release Scenes from a Train, on which yours truly played a whole bunch of the drums and percussion, is currently at #20 on the prestigious Echoes Top 25 list for August.
From Public to Personal
In lieu of the usual listing public events this month, I thought I’d share an unusual personal event in the form of a poem I wrote a quarter-century ago at this time of year, exploring the intense interregnum between monsoon rains (pun intended) and the combustible inner inertia that results from that state of suspended energy–and affirming that one never knows what surprises await in one’s A 440 Newsletter!
The Unbearable Stillness of August
The unbearable stillness of August in Sonora
is deep as the body’s memory for pain.
Cicadas whine their tiny drills through my eardrums
while all the lives mine could have been hover
like transient angels on the blue fringe of vision,
and the supple dance of unrealized futures taunts.
By six a.m. the heat is oppressive; by noon
the skull is hot to the touch and the brain
nearly boiled in its own rare juices, as thought
becomes a function of the breeze which almost
but never quite stirs, molecules vibrant with longing,
molecules unable to move. It is a kind of perfection,
which finally is always boring anyway, falling
like sheets of cool air before the advancing storm,
the sudden wind, dust devils, the shocking thunder
and then the violent rain, which solves nothing,
heals nothing, but merely italicizes desire.
We who live here wear our having lived through it
like a talisman. We do not flee, we do not
succumb to the blandishments of expensive relief.
We stay, survive, our mad scarred beauty made clean.
(from Wilderness in the Marrow, © Will Clipman)
photo by Nancy Smith-Jones
~Be well, be in touch, and above all be~
