Back when my mother was facing Breast Cancer head on, I was doing the shaman thing "old style" trying to carry some of it for her. Lots of people thought I had cancer, this was 94... you can see the seriousness of my predicament. You bet, I did have the tumours...crazy , huh? those were the old days of realizing the parameters of my process, how and why I was taking on burdens from others or experiencing the world's pain inside my own body. I was practicing some pretty elite stuff... and it was no where near as fun as this sounds. I was like a 90 year old guy in my body. the weight sometimes felt like 2 tons. No kidding. There were times when I would walk, and I felt like I was as heavy as a jet liner. I'd get up to fast, and I'd collapse.... I'd try to keep my balance and the earth would quake. No fun at all. I ws seeing too much, having too many dreams about the days to come, which (by the way) are now behind us all. I was frightened for the world... and trying to stop the rush of our society imploding on itself. No fun at all. I tried to explain why the emergency was all around us, inside all our lives... I tride to confide so many of these things to people I knew. they were shocked... and they were terrifed and they thought I was deluded. Oh well. For me, each and every day was a big warrior walk, and I knew it all came down to how I could find myu peace inside my own breath and keep towards symbolic beneficial action. So I did just that. while ringing up folks at the ehalth food store , where I worked, I might have a few words come to me, that I knew I could say to make their days go lighter. So I would test those words. I would very gracefully speak them, and keep a watch on what the affect was. Over time, I learned that my accuracy was pretty to notch. Folks I never met, I'd sense what the dis-ease they were dealing with... Or the dilemna, or the challenge... or I'd sense our shared commitments, beliefs or how e could commune for a few seconds and turn that into a lifetime shared vibration... by the time I gave them their recipts and change, it was time to move to the next folks in line. I did a great job of being very careful not to do damage, or say too much or to not pretend to be a know it all... or anything like that. I was just making conversation, light conversation...yet, I'd hear these words, "wow, yesterday I was just wondering that", or these words..."I was just thinking that... " or sometimes even these words "how did you know that... we have to talk".... and so it goes. Practice. But you see that I was not feeling the lightness of being. I was feeling the heaviness of getting ready to lose folks close to me, again. So..., wouldn't you know, I began to feel the pull of my mother, and was weeping that I needed to see her someday soon. A friend loaned me her mastercard,a fter she said she'd buy me a ticket home. A great big miracle happened. I saw my mother a week before she passed on. Can't beat that... no one knew she was leaving , yet. neither did I, not consciously, anyway.... Yet, there I was, meeting with her, huggin her and then the rest of the family was asking me "what did you do to mother?" I asked them, "why"... and they said, "Since you came back, she has perked up and seems like she is going to live a lot longer, we never saw her so alive, in a long while... we were afraid to tell you how ill she really was".... all I know is this, I told my mother, "if you need to leave this planet, then you have my love and my blessing... bu tif you want to stay, it's up to you ... you have my blessing either way"... so... I saw here, hugged her... tried to flow light through me into her... then I came back here... a week later, she passed on.... then 6 months later, my dad passed on too... and I was devastated. You can see it here. they never got to see me succeed with my talent. I felt I had let them down. All those years away, trying to make a path towards something more than just our Hard Worker for theBoss german lifestyle ethic. Trying to make some room on the ladder for the gifted talented folks in my family. A great big huge sacrifice. yet, I'd not had the chance to invite mydad on stage to play his trumbone with my band... or did I? Get ready, cause here is the rest of the story. I had a band called the "Toe Knee and the Warren Peace band" in Palo Alto , back in those days. This is the cassette lable for some of those live performances, some at St. Mike's Alley cafe. It was a big band, I had conga players, mandolin players, a couple of guitarists, a trombonist, and a regular drummer... lots of extra voices. We were practicing at night in the basement of the President's Hotel in Palo Alto. Oone night, as we rehearsed, I had just finished singing th e trombone part to Debbie the trombone player. My dad had played the trombone masterfully for many years... except he played it along with big band records in the family basement back east. He had been taught by his dad and family that playing music was a curse on the family. My uncle pete was a successful band leader,a nd died before I was born. He was my Dad's oldest brother. In a sense, he had followed in his oldest brother's fottsteps by taking up the same intrument, the trombone... yet, by the time he was a teenager, my uncle pete had drowned later after a gig, trying to be super man german and swimming under the little miami river (as usual) to a bar on the other side... except that night, he neve came up out of th ewater. My dad saw the family go through hell at that loss, and music was considered a no-no thereafter. I didn't know all the details, all I knew was that when I grew up in our loarge family, my dad played trombone note for note along with Bix Bederbeck and the other big bands... My dad was master of the tormbone... I knw this further, becuase i have filmed world class trombonists in my adult life... and my dad could match or kick all their asses, except the worl never saw/heard/knew of him. you can imagine my dismay , when I filmed in the famous RCA studios in NY, and heard trombonists from the NY symphony, and the Boston symphony... and I knew somebody who could play as good or better, except with more heart.... my dad. Ouch. He hid it away. and knowing that, I'd dedicated part of my life to creating a stage show, then inviting him up as a surprise. It was a dream matching Springsteen's life equation. Bruce has been known to do stuff like that with his family. (by the way, I have met Bruce through a friend... but that is another story... some other day... Howdy bruce!) Anyway. Back to the President's Hotel and the trombone part I'd arranged for Debbie Wheaton, a great trombone player in her own right. Fluid... human, hand crafted notes, her specialty... I sang the idea, she matched it and we were on our 5th or 6th version of "Concrete and Steel", one of my famous songs you haven't yet heard... I closed my eyes on that 6th take... and I suddenly heard my dad playing through her trombone. Unmistakable. I felt him climb out of the audience in some future time, meet me there that night as if it were Carnegie Hall, and playing his heart out while weeping with Joy... I was crying too... I did not want to have that vision stop... it was huge, it was deep. I was trembling... I tried to disguise it, after the session... On my ride hom, I was filled with sweet memories of my dad's playing. Outside my handy-man's shack, befor ei turned in for the night, I heard the Owl cry in the tree outside my door. Unmistakable Owl cry... And I knew what that meant. I went to work the next day, then came home to a message on my machine, "Daddy died... the coroner sayd it happened last night around 12:30 am".... What more can I say... with the time-change difference, that was exactly the time we were playing that song, and I heard him come through Debbie's trombone. Thanks Dad... for showing up... how great you sounded!
