Green Tomatoes & the ghost of the Brookdale Lodge
A major snow was getting ready to hit, last week.
I hadn't watched the news or weather reports,
but I could feel the stir in the air.
Time to rake the leaves..
... and I still felt work to do,
...walked around the property,
...gathered the last flowers.
Put them on the dining room table,
... all in one vase...
Even the indoor house plants pined for attention,
I made cuttings of the philodendrons,
Arranged them in a large old yogurt container,
knowing they were gonna increase the indoor jungle.
build oxygen for the winter months.
Resting outside, with my pipe and some Captain Black,
tobacco I had been introduced to by one of my mentors,
... many years ago.
I thought of him, Charles Barnes, and the many years
which he had spent with his friends,
Georgia O'keefe, Imogene Cunningham, Ansel Adams,
and many of the Bohemian artists
of the 40's abstract and moderninst,
and California Impressionist communities.
Letting my thoughts travel back to those eras...
places I'd seen in his phtographs when I visited his studio,
and immersed myslef in his stories of those good old days
... around California and New Mexico,
and Brown County Indiana... and elsewhere,
in the 30's 40's 50'... early 60's
Where communities of artists gathered, Bhemian style,
shared ideas and ideals, the men who loved women,
and their friends who they accepted, no maater the swing...
their free form poetry, dance, music, art-all nighters,
sharing models, painting, cooking art food,
sharing free verse... those ancient balck and white photos,
and sepia tones with the sacredness of the human form,
memorialized beyond vanity or modesty... artistically
left behind in huge painitngs with thrown paint.
the photos of splattered colors everywhere,
the smiling faces of the immortal qualities of
artist pushing the edge of beauty...
beyond false judgement or lousy skepticsism,
towards the limits of imagination, featured in
beauty that still sort of lasts while it fades in memory,
unmistakable in the infinity of the shared
joy of creative fluidity...embracing the sacred,
while getting loaded, dancing,... painting everything in sight,
then sleeping on floors and cooking each other breakfast,
and going at it again... and more free music...
recited lyric and song,
posed for each other...
lived free and artfully...
It was/is easy to picture it.
Before TV.
The same unmistakable vast moments we all share,
when we know we have won the war against
despair, by sharing the beauty...
The times I visited Charles, were after he had had his stroke,
and about a week after I walked up to Mellencamp,
and bent his ear about the truth of real music beyond fame...
asked him to listen to mys tuff... he'd refused,
but stayed on the porch with me, anyway,
shared ideas for that half hour and looked at my art cards.
Later, it seemed he had answers for some of my questions,
showcasing his own route towards the painter he decided to be.
But I'd ended up about a mile from the "lil Bastard's" studio,
at Charles place, after being told about the old Bohemian,
he had had a stroke a couple years before,
but foks had told me of his world accalimmed friends,
the group he had traveled inside of ... in this world.
His days at Abiqu with Georgia...
times shared with Ansel.
That wasn't the reason, I went over there, well...
I went over there becasue I wanted to see, first hand,
a kind of artist who lived for the art of doing the art.
...and sure enough...it was instant recognition...
Most folks couldn't understand anything he said...
but I found a perfect use for my psychic skills,
we'd sit for hours and share perception about compositon,
color, and he'd give me a tour of his albums of photos,
arm in arm iwht these icons most folks could only dream
... of sharing a lunch with.
He'd show me letters from each of them...
a note they'd written, and invitation for a sketch trip
to the ghost ranch...
I understood every word.
But... more than that.
I understood the spirit beneath the words,
I sensed I was getting a view into a style of creative life,
that if I chose... I might get close to,
but could never quite match...
... tv... the news... the various machinations
of our recent advanced culture,
all but drowning out any possibility of anything close
to quiet rich, accoustically music filled natural living.
All the while, while I smoked the Captain Black,
remembering Charles and knowing for certian
...that he is on the other side, now.
Might be even mixed with the air that surrounded the
pipe tobacco...maybe ... might even be ,
...the reason for the richness of the memory,
right then...
and ... I couldn't help; but find myself,
noticing that I wondered if any such
communities of free flowing, big thought, idea moving
artists still exist, except in the deep jungles of Peru...
Iceland... or off the grid in Mauii...
or New Zealand...
and noticing... I was right then...
...dreaming about someday starting one.
Maybe on some other planet,
cause the idiots furthering war and spy everything,
had /have pretty much ruined every square inch of peace,
left on this sorry planet.
It was the Captain Black tobacco... and the promise
of transition and transformation....
that kep me from imploding right then.
and ... I guess realizing that,
as long as you and I... dear reader,
can combine long distance force through creative intent,
maybe.. maybe maybe...
some kind of art reality will re-emerge beyond quotas,
options, and investors.
Arriving again as purity of creative intent.
Available to be interpreted, in it's sacred austere self.
awards or no awards...
I tell you what... the other day, I tried to watch
.. an ice skater, a woman beauty, do her routine on tv,
and there was nothing except the commentator's evaluations.
Holy Jesus. Inbelievable.
Is there any chance such a piece of beautiful God Art,
could just dance free in beauty with music,
without some joker explaining that the triple axel
was incomplete?
we are lost.
the ship sank... folks.
this american, whatever it was supposed to be,
...ship sank.
It's turned into a media recuse unit for the imposters,
and the case workers for the lost.
Sorry.
I guess if I really meant that, I'd a sailed outa here.
... anyway.
Just a day or so ago,
I'd heard back from Peter Coyote.
A guy I'd hoped to meet, and had met in 2002, or 2001...
He had just thanked me for my mail,
but said he was busy
working on his own projects,
couldn't remember me...
... so between the yard work, and Captain Black,
... I returned to my computer
... and sent a jpg of how I looked back in those days,
of 2001...
when I had met him at sfmoma...
in Frisco,
knowing that he probably didn't realize I was on a wave of beauty,
wandering through
Gerhardt Richter's wide catalogue of art.
It was as close as I had ever been to the fredom of creative flow,
bearing witness to that full scale visual testimony
that the sacredness of art beyond evaluation,
is beauty impossbile to own or evaluate,
you have to swim insde it... immerse your self in it,
allow it to feed your soul...
and rise you to the real level you can bear witness,
that is your real pure power of being,
your potential...that we are all,
truly.
...if somehow we release from the
square head thoughts,and struggle
designed to bind/tie us to incompleteness,
so we can keep buying insurance and ski-doos,
and guns for shooting what we can't understand.
wouldn't it be interesting,
if art had been the chosen
shared entertainment...
...rather than tv police shows,
... and murder and war ???
Noticing the effect Richter's paintings
of his daughters with their kids,
breast feeding, showing that beauty, that sublime silence,
that treasure of stillness... perfect.
Noticing the effect of Richter's famous
"Ver Meer" painting... had had on me,
and still has... this winter,
and remembering the gallery of other solemn paintngs,
Richter had dedicated to the German activist martyrs,
watching the people walk past all that art, that beauty...
grabbing for the next image,
while Pete and his fiance contemplated each one deeply,
and even deeper...Just Like I was doing.
It was unmistakeable.
Three of us were there, among the hundreds.
It was bound to happen
that I would thank him for his work,
of similar velocity, through characters/parts
he had played in so many films...
... remembering that, ...on that day I met him there,
I'd not even understood how many voice overs
he had completed by then,
all beautiful, consciousness raising
and transformational work,
for our society and all our shared future.
IN a sense, he'd left his mark,
while so many of the imposters of that busness,
elbowed there way for awards..., for blockbusters,
for trinkets that mean nothing.
that guy had a legacy... still ongoing.
among the fools.
still leaving beauty for you!
and for me.
In the back yard again...
while watching the tomatoe plants and green peppers,
full of fruit... but knowing the time had come to pick them free,
... not realizing the snow REALLY was, really coming,
I reminisced about the week before meeting Peter,
3 years back...and knowing that he wouldn't believe me,
that I had actually seen him in a tv movie,
the week before he and his fiance, had walked near me at sfmoma,
and I had said, loud to the invisible air, these words;
"God, I want to meet that guy, someday...
and I want to thank him"
And noticing that those words had hung extra long in the air,
that they had glowed that day...
I had realized something insde the idea of it, ws ripe for the time.
And then, last week,
reminding myself how it had all happened,
within a week, I had found myself, Up in the city,
at the Richter exhibit...
and I had seen the world in front of me light up bright,
as I had walked into the first gallery,
seeing a clamouring cluster of people rushing everywhere,
grabbing for the art... but not seeing any of it,
it seemed, ... hectic, clamouring and chaotic,
around a painter I can believe in,
Gerhardt Richter,
yetr sensing more,
becaue the air was GLOWING folks!
I noticed that I had been stopped in my tracks.
I could feel an inside signal.
something I had trained myself, for years... to acknowledge.
... so I stopped. I held still... I sensed it... what was it?
I had stood silent, gathering myself,
I waited.
and I asked... "something important is happening,
...what is it?"
I'd held still, and found I had been drawn,
energized towards, these two people among the many,
about 50 feet from em,
in the far off corner, a man and a woman
with their backs to me...
they were deep into what they explored in Richter's wrok,
and then... they turned around.
I asked myself..."ok... so this is somebody...
and I am still...so... who is it?"
I walked away... to the next gallery.
then I turned back, and I looked again,
as I also looked at the paintings there,
I heard the words... in my inner ear,
..."Peter Coyote".
Silent, in my heart and mind.
....I was dumstruck.
Yes.
Holy shit.
Peter coyote.
The guy I said I wanted to meet.
No shit.
exactly as it happened, folks.
truth.
Then, I had remembered,
that the week before,
... like I wrote just now,
...I had "requested", to the invisioble air,
... to meet him.
It's against my policy to invade other people's lives.
No matter how many times I have had this expereince,
whether it ws the sensation that I would go and see Mellencamp,
and then...did...
or this time, where I sensed the "beyond"
... of co-incindence
beyond co-incidence,
it's always like the very first time,
and I always have to climb through my own ego,
and wrestle my doubting mind.... from interfere - ing.
I wasnt' there to get something, to lean on him,
or to invade.
but the moment was real...
To me... it's about honor.
... and respect.
Not about being a fan, or invasion.
My process along these lines,
is about allowing the distance,
and measuring the strides, or the journey.
especially my own breath.
and balance
Yet... my "guides" and perhaps my path,
reminded me that I was there to see Richter's paintings,
and ...I had also requested,
that moment I found myself inside of...
standing nest to Pete, sharing a view of a Richter masterpiece,
letting it be natural, holy and obviously meant to be,
yet huge... while no big deal,
all at once.
His idea, as well as mine,
even though I had requested it,
noticing that it had it's own life,
complete, and perfect,
Walking among that range of art,
I had felt completely in league with Richter,
yet...I have a wider range... than he,
it seems so absurd to say so,
even harder to explain, because... I know so,
and still ... to be anoonymous,
unknown by any of them... yet I KNEW them,
through their work!
What a ride...
I felt like I was among equals,
and let me tell you this,
this includes you,
yeah... you too.
we all have such potential,
the questions we all face on the path of survival,
while each of us share even more unlimited potential,
how cramped we all are,
no matter what we relase, create, participate in,
it could be so much bigger,
I am convinced,
if we lived... say... on the beaches of some far off islands
generatins ago,
long before so called industrial civilizations
replaced all such harmony with machine fed war based ego,
ripping and tearing...
there I was, among two known greats,
each sharing, unlimited style,
and knowing this too, is my world,
and now... right next to another who travels a simlar path,
.. a kind of role model, about 12 years ahead of me on this path,
Peter Coyote...
It was too big to "grock"....
I took the time it takes to settle down.
Seeing the huge walls covered in tapestry of color , huge wide and abstract,
and then the very next batch social commentary,
another gallery comprised of tender sublime grace,
and yet other paintings , painted in styles fluid and consistent,
looking like Van Gogh, Ver Meer,
the great impressionists..
... to see what it takes to allow such creativity,
between paying the landlords, and the kings and queens
their rent ... giving "cesear what is cesear's"... so to speak
I could sense the struggle,
that being Gerhardt Richter must be,
and to read, at the same time, in his writings on those walls,
that he bears witness to it,
I kept being "slayed" by the work.
So powerful, that I could barely move,
...barely contain myself.
Experiencing this,
then seeing Peter Coyote
and his fiance
in the same relationship to the art.
Also "slayed" by it's beauty.
Noticing that, and realizing that my own artistc range was similar.
Yet sensing the spiritual path we all walk,
in relatin to this creative process,
which in essence, only gets competed, if witnessed,
by the people it feeds.
Noticing that while I was there,
among those many masterpieces,
I had also met many,
some class mates, some fellow travelers on the path,
all straining at similar chains,
designed by the greedy and the machines,
so we would keep buying thier coffee, or cars,
or whatever,
... and all of us suffer for this disconnection.
so few get to rise above it,
and the few who do,
find few to do the dance with,
and finally... undesrtanding,
that I was there, inside that moment,
it wsn't the academy awards, or the grammy's or
even an artist's community with kids running barefoot,
I had somehow arrived in that moment...
must have desereved it...
and..the moment was bigger than I,
realizing that it was not up to me to hold back, then.
at first, I walked up to Peter and made it a short and sweet,
offered a respectiful greeting, my gratitude,
then pulled myself away to the memorial gallery,
the one that had been dedicated to the activist martyrs
who'd all died in suspicious ways in Germany,
paintings by Richter of obscene slayings...
... some in prison... some in the streets,
some splayed out.
Knowing the price of standing for such beliefs
... in my own life,
had also included ...the cost.
Somehow, I had survived.
Maybe because I learned to bend,
rather than change,
to duck.. and to instead remove myself...
... to instead learn about creative intent,
and decline war with the war makers.
Knowing it all too well...
the challenge represented by the greedy who walk ahead of us,
drill out of sight, and suck the earth dry,
leaving it baren.
I was leaving that gallery,
because I knew it too well,
as courage,
yet decdlined the rage...
then saw Pete's future wife,
deep in thought there... taking it all in...
as if it were, exactly what it was,
a funeral gallery,
a memorial to the courageous,
so willing to die for society's blindness,
... I stopped and went back...
Drank deeper, in silence, ...too.
right to the edge of tears.
for such inconsolable wounds.
Realizing that the honesty of Gerhardt Richter
... was empowerment,
and getting a fresher view,
... of the part all art can play, in bearing witness to truth,
and noticing that, thjough I had steeered away from certain imagery,
such power was also in my paintings,
media, songs...access tv shows,
... as well as in the sacred walks each of us makes,
away from such potential inside our creative power,
...and realizing that, art or no art,
...it also plays out in the lives of others.
Suddenly..I was inside a renewal, a rebirth.
Holy.
These are the thoughts, and more, which I was embracing,
while realizing that I had to pick the green tomatoes...
... last week, in my temporary back yard,
... and as all these slow and steady realizations hit me...
it was starting to snow.
Finding meaning in the moment,
I finished my pipe, then got up and started,
the art of picking the green tomatoes.
In the weeks since, they have provided many a tasty bite,
to combine sweetness with the hint of sour...
and knowing that there's still a bowl full,
still slowly ripening,
a couple of tasty moents each and every day,
ripening, like tomatoes do...
in the dark... away from the sun,
...as I write this.
I am editing footage I shot at the Brookdale lodge,
from 2 years back,
my idea to shoot it,
to create a step forward,
with no budget,
for a singer songwriter friend,
it's a big step topwards all the things I just mentioned.
Releasing the beauty to a wider audience,
as a sort of sacrifice of love and art.
Giving someone somehting they could never afford to buy,
a step forward. Because you deserve to be touched,
by her songs and music.
Even if she struggles to maintain her marriage,
and family and still do it for the sake of our betterment,
without backers, without awards, or a budget,
I use this as my art work.. again,
because we need to see it wider and soar towards it's destiny,
or the world will just get grayer, and darker...
I challenged myslef to notice barriers,
walls... that seemd to infiltrate the ease of how this could have gone,
explainations for the computer crashing...
for the struggle,
for the edge of loss that seems to invade this,
so... Yesterday I traveled into the internet,
and discovered there were ghosts in that place,
where i filmed...
no kidding,
no wonder,
so....I read more about the Brookdale Lodge ghost.
One I had sensed, yet never consciously knew about...
A symbol for the struggle,
a moral to the story,
a caution...in the wind.
and slowing,
...releasing the dead-lines,
surrendering to the beauty of looking into this reflection,
... I am coming to understand
why I could never play music there.
At the Brookdale Lodge,
In all these years...
Why it was even, hard to eat dinner there,
why I could never stop there for long,
sit around a beer... or take a tour...
Yet, to help someone else,
because she is world class,
as good as Annie DiFranco,
...I have since filmed there, more than once,
but, now understanding that the only parameters
such doors were worth walking through,
for me,
were...on behalf of others...
Yeah I have felt roadblocks,
the walls and barriers around that footage I have filmed,
ever since,
and I needed to know why.
For me... it was a work of art,
to develop the courage and release my ideas,
so I could see the barriers at all,
rather than failure,
to understand the barriers were real,
and then to see the sorrow,
which those reasons called barriers had shielded me from.
And today I am editing one of those performances for DVD.
Becasue I had gathered enough courage to look deep enough,
so that I could retrieve the footage,
from a sort of limbo,
I found a sad story of a life lost,
a little girl who was just playing,
and the wounds of her death.. which still hover there.
today.
Gradually, understanding why it took almost 2 years to face the footage.
The girl who drowned there in the 40's has been seen by several people,
... searching for her mother,
...and some say her mother wanders the halls in tears,
in a search of her too.
she had been playing by the indoor creek,
fell in, and was found drowned...
Years later, another girl had drowned in the pool,
...closed to the public since,
Many gangsters stopped over there, back in those days gone by,
as well as movie stars... and the elite... of society.
Whatever transpired there, by the gangsters,
...required passageways,
hidden rooms... secrets.
Whenever I stopped to visit the Brookdale lodge,
... over the 14 years I was in the Bay area,
it always felt like a dark graveyard.
Not only because of the ghosts,
but...possibly also because of the range of fears and despair,
such losses continue to resurrect,
as well as the activity of gangsters that went on there,
during other times,
while the other tragedies happened.
Some say bodies are buried under the dining room.
But it is/was also a fact that the city Boulder Creek,
where the Brookdale Lodge was built,
...is also a site, that was a burial ground for the Ohlone Indians,
and they say those tribes always stayed clear for such reasons,
...the burial sites, there, ... are more than one...
The secret passages built under the Brookdale lodge and secret rooms,
were built for the famous and the gangsters...
...and were used in ways we will never fully know.
all I can say, is there has always been a definite unsettled quality,
to the place, for me... also the town.
It was , at first, the obvious landing spot I could never accept,
Lots of trendy shops,
great restaurants,
possible good galleries to show my work...
but for me... never could be home, or feel welcoming,
even though I tried that one too,
20 years ago...
and then again over the past 14 years...
The Brookdale Lodge, has morphed, many times,
... the place has existed for over a hundred years,
and many parties, concerts, gatherings, have occurred in all eras.
Two drownings.
Neither experience seems to have been fully cleared.
And both, as well as others... witnessed as ghosts
... hauntings ... witnessed by many people, .
Yet... I found myself filming there 2 years ago,
...then filming again a week afterwards.
I can easily and very clearly sense the place,
after being inside there,
which is unigue and points to something more,
I remember the dining room, the bar room... the indoor creek,
the garden, the parking lot... the bathroom,
the pond and the balcony.
...All too clearly,
...and still can sense the energy,
...the sort of fog...just as clear,
as the day I filmed there...
I felt those places singed into my memory,
too deep.
Reading about them yesterday,
and on the internet, these past few days,
I have come to understand the road blocks
I had felt around completing these projects filmed there,
My spiritual vows overlapped the need to create media.
And I bow to the vows... no matter how much
... the money I might have gotten, could have been necessary.
Whatever I did there was "on spec"... in a sense... for free.
...anyway...
How this all releates to Peter Coyote,
... and this footage I am editing,
is this...
I've also been working on a script of the times I shared around Jessica Dubroff,
the 9 year old girl who died in a plane crash, flying across country.
and her family...
Somebody I knew as a family of friends,
who I had filmed for my access tv show,
and whom I had visited...many times...
Yeah.
another child that had passed over, "early".
When I wrote out the various parts for the script,
I know that at least 3 of them could easily be played by Peter,
...for example, he'd be a shoe-in for the role of Jess' father...
...and others could be played by Kris Kristoofferson,
... for example, as the flying instructor...
...Kris is another person I recently re-connected with...
Just to thank , for how he has walked his life path.
But neither of these guys has much time... these days...
,,, they are keeping closer to their families,
and it seems absurd to try to get such folks involved in playing
roles about kids that lost lives while adults seemed to be asleep at the wheel,
it sort of makes little sense to further any part of such equations.
So.. meeting these guys,
and then not doing the rest, not getting an agent and pushing a script araound,
seems far easier, than the silliness of another tv movie.
I mean, wouldn't I rather those guys just didn't get interfered with?
...both he and Pete have inspired me.
and that's gotta be good enough.
yet...to understand the overlap of all this,
you have to know that I intend to go and see a concert, finally,
that an old friend, Joan Baez will be playing in a wek or so,
... maybe I will hand deliver this Brookdale concert demo to her,
because i'd like to film a Joan concert someday...
and... besides, I think she would love sharon's music.
... Yeah... I want to see Joan again,
it's been along time since we had lunches.
Ease of conversation,away form the trappings of fame.
I miss it.
I may be able to film one of her concerts someday,
or interview her, in the way that only I can,
but it won't be about doing it to get somehwere on Joan's fame.
It will be about having lunch with a friend.
And bringing back some of that for the world,
to pass it along a few generations by filming it,
but not with some top heavy crew.
my simple solitary style.
easy.
simple.
non-invasive.
sincere.
not like Scorsese, who did a great job, last year,
but like I would do, a completely different view,
and one requiring a guy like me,
somebody unknown with no agenda.
but...
listento this,
... I mean...
...check it out,
Joan had used to live at a place up the hill in the Bay area,
.. a place called "Struggle Mountain".
There was a little girl who had also drowned in the pool there,
when it was a commune, in the early 70's,
not an incident that had involved Joan,
but others who lived there...
A tragedy of a certain day...
Feeling any chills up and down your spine yet?
These past few days, and this past week...
I started to piece this all together,
as a certain view that i was seeing,
...in relation to the Brookdale ghosts.
There are many symbols inside of these tragedies.
I have been releasing my judgement,
... on the parts played by the parents.
...and it has helped me trash my first script ideas,
in favor of a better version, with regards to my friend Jessica,
and Lisa, ... her mother.
At least for me,
hearing these stories...
knowing about the Brookdale lodge ghost,
it's all no good,
unless it includes a type of redemption.
the question has got to be,
if knwoing aboutthese things matters so much to me,
then what part of the equation can I play,
could there be a certain type of creative project,
that steers us all, who hear about these things,
towards a lesson learned,
towards beauty...?
This past summer,
to get ready to complete the Brookdale concert editing,
I have had to deal with all the times I have heard about,
or what I have seen,
... of these kinds of experiences,
... and how/why I feel so deeply affected,
...in my own life, first hand.
i remember the time I painted a portrait,
back in Iowa, for parents of a kid that died ina corn filed,
lost on acid...
abandoned by his friends.
Diving into the challenge, for his parents,
I was blown away by the image my brush creeated,
by ...The holiness inside his eyes,
His friends had left him out there... alone,
...it took 3 weeks to find his body,
yet...
the painting that came through my brush ws redemption,
the brush did it... not me,
and I was blwon away.
Just like these other "tragic accidents",
where the parents, the care takers,
seem to have been lost or confused, or blind,
... on a certain day, yet have to l;ive with such knowledge,
...the days the kids went to the other side,
seems to also have inside it,
a potential for beauty,and learning.
Realizing that this was part of a path I have,
which is about making a difference,
if I can... where I can... if possible...
to help find that beuaty... and convey it somehow.
Sometiems a creative path can help us,
by relaying a message back form the other side,
through the eyes/souls of the presence inside the paintings
Isn't this similar to being able to understand the language
used by a stroke victim, such as Charles Barnes?
Others couldn't understand his words, I could.
For many years, I have painted of native americans,
and have chosen the various subjects,
by asense I have, for what they want to reveal from where they are NOW,
though their lives had been cut down by the greedy,
I found compassion pouring out of my bruch,
and out of their painted eyes.
and it took my breath away.
I was always humbled.
because I knew I held blame on those who had cut them down,
and I was instead "slayed by the spirit" of peace, empathy,
and brotherhood...
and these kids that seem to have fallen,
becasue of our upside down society,
are souls such as these.
Brookdale lodge in the 40's , was not a safe place for kids.
Friends I know who live up on skyline,
at that place called Struggle Mountain,
recently transformed that spot where the little girl Sierra had died,
...into a beautiful peaceful garden.
For too many years... it seemed, they have a shared wound,
of a that memory of a drowning tragedy, in the 70's.
NOW they are slowly replentishing the energy of the dreams
... upon which it was founded,
and which had brought them all together there,
...in the first place. And kids that contribute to the building they do,
... are kids the same age that Sieerra would have been if she had lived.
A commune of close freinds seeking to create a new,
a better world... in spite of the shared wound...
demonstrating they can also live for the future,
while honoring the dreams of the past... and the joy shared.
...these ideals did not shield the child...then,
bu the lesson, and the rebirth of the ideals,
can shiled the future kids.
Don't get me wrong,
I am not casting judgement or blame.
don't get me wrong...
I am not trying to convey simplicity or fantasy.
I am explaining, first of all,
.. that the residual grief I found around these varous spots,
... knocked me to my knees,
... caused me to be frozen... in grief.
But the tears, though necessary and good,
...have had their day.
...Yes, this week,
while contemplating the green tomatoes,
the coming snow...
...I finally found out about the Brookdale ghost,
and I understand more about why that hovering energy
surrounding this project, as well as my script
... about the times I spent around Jessica Dubroff,
had to get witnessed, honored, grieved again..
and finally released,
again....
These people, living and passed,
in my world, in my belief,
...are all part of our world.
We live among them, and they live among us.
and the lessons, all share similar cross-over paths.
...similar ideals for a better world,
perhaps found on the other side,
perhaps left here for us to find again,
and in need to be/seen completed through us,
who still have courage to try again...
I feel like I am in the center of it all,
this recent batch of stories...
... sort of bound to it... but not in a bad way,
... understanding why,
I stand ready to do my part with the art at hand,
the stpes in front of me,
in a sense, the work assigned...
but I do not go into it now, blind.
seeing can hinder, before it empowers.
not with blame and rage,
but with courage.
Whatever is worth creating,is worth doing with beauty,
and it's a commitment to this,
which is Why I have had to take my time.
It's not about making money with tragedies,
converted to a TV movie...
Unless such a movie could help us all create a better world,
where can there be peace... for any of us?
So... this equates, for me...
to... stop... stop and find a better reason, and a better focus...
or just go fishing ...instead.
Over the eyars,
... when I went ot various battlegrounds,
... to pray for the confused dead,
... in some cases, now state parks,
I did so, in secret... not as show....
I felt obligated,
to honor the urge to do those things,
which had come thorugh the expereince of touching
a life like the one lived by
a person , a soul like Chief Joseph... and others.
It was a necessary part of such a painting,
to step on such paths.
In this case, too,
there was also a sense of bearing witness.
Noticing that the veils between worlds we all need,
for living a real life,
are very thin... very thin... indeed.
We each walk the tight rope betwene the worlds.
.We can be the intention inside out.
We can be the steps we consciously take,
with the living.
while we also know we wlak on the backs fo those before us.
Not fantasy, or confusion.
and if in temporary confusion,
then lving thorugh it, while unraveling to beauty.
We cannot stop short of the beauty.
Notice,
many souls each and every day are traveling over,
it would seem to be early for some,
due to the imbalance of wealth, and the greed...
they die in despair,
feeling lost,
though trapped in a mansion,
Others, lost outside those warm mansions,
... for example, can not find the resources to embrace the beauty,
which could feed the desparate locked in materialism,
... and meanwhile,
we all know,
... that too many starved right as I wrote this,
and we will lose,
because none of us,
will ever see their beauty, their potential,
which would create peace for us all,
if shared.... if only shared like the hidden grain stored,
could have been shared with them.
to see it,
you have to be storng and courageous about your own potential,
then understand that if you can develop it,
you will have to helop deliver the ones who are locked away from it.
.. and to see it , you have to be ready,
and to be ready,
you have to practice... and get ready.
then practice, practice, practice again.
and finally... after all that,
all you have to do is arrive , 100%.
just show up.
One way is finding beauty right where you stand... sit...right now.
Another way, is to go out into the last of nature,
and practice seeing it where it was once harmony... fulfilled.
While you hear it cry.
And... for me...
this means,
just so happens also means.
noticing the beauty left ready and waiting,
right at that creek edge,
inside the Brookdale Lodge,
right where that kid played,
before she fell in,
and still waits to be brought forwards,
...as beauty,
...ever since that kid drowned at Brookdale.
Today... while I finish editing the first set,
of the conert I filmed there,
I have to look into the reflection,
of that pool while I walked by that very spot,
and uncerstand,
i saw the beauty..
... and now .. .if I choose it,
I can bring it back out of such a reflection,
through the editing I do ... perhaps between tears,
replaced with beauty.
IN my friend's stellar Brookdale Lodge performance,
I take special note of her song "Holy Water",
which she sang there, that night.
... and whether she knows it or not,
I think she had an audience of "one" hovering nearby...
Until I could understand , well,
I had to stop and explore why that song rang so golden.
Wrestled, "so to speak" out of the jaws of tragedy.
What I told Willie Nelson,
...about this prayer I've had,
for "Brick Walls", he said he understood fully.
and he has his own version.
No surprise.
anyone who wants to walk forward and be where you are 100%,
is bound to see what you are passing along the way.
what you see, you see for a reason.
so... work on letting yourself see.
What some call success,
... is not always the goal....
I know, I need to pray to see the unseen goal,
something more like fulfillment at the right time.
Not fulfillment grabbed from a second ahead,
but the kind that walks up to you,
and greets you,
while you walk towards it.
I could have been on that plane, that day,
with Jessica Dubroff.
I would have had to insist on it.
Then again,
I think I was more about,
NOT getting in the plane that day... ,
so...in the case of Jessica's plane crash,
though hundreds of miles away,
I had to see that I stayed clear fo the whole deal,
for my reasons.
I can't evaluate the choice of others,
just becasue I would have my choice...
They hadn't taken me along,
to document the flight,
as they had said they would.
So... I never got the chance to be the stubborn hol out,
...saying "F**k the interviews,
"F**k the press,
F**k the media...
"F**k the world record",
... or "F**k the breakthroughs,
the money... the t-shirts and hats",
let's Get there first!"
It took years to realize this,
necessary years.
but doing so, helped me hear the ghost of Brookdale sooner,
release the shadow of an idea of a lesson,
and get the REAL idea of the real lesson,meant for me.
It's a style of success most would refuse.
For me, maybe not for you, for me. my path.
Yet I get to see these so called "mistakes of others"
Or to assemble ideas about what mistakes our leaders make today.
All shadows of reality,
not reality.
Reality is what I can create today, that is honoring my potential,
and what can you create today, that can honor yours,
and how will it inspire others to rise to theirs?
So..Even now,
I know i have to be very, very, very careful,
about any script I may want to write about anything.
Becasue, for me it matters what such things encourage in others.
....some things are more important than
a TV movie of the week,
or a show as SFMOMA.
Or sharing a movie project with
Peter Coyote, Willie Nelson, Joan Baez, or Kris,
... or Tarantino.
Personally, I would be very embarrassed, if I were Quentin.
He's written some classic scenes...
... moved the world in a hip sort of way,
... but just like Swartzenegger,
... he's got a lot of dues to pay for the folks he influenced to do harm to others.... through what he created.
I would nto want to bear such burdens.
I could never live with myself, if I were either of them.
What kind of progress could a soul make,
which would help repair the damage it creates on the road to an Oscar?
I prayed for Brick Walls, and watched folks grab my share of the loot,
then watched them do stupid things drunk on power.
They taught me about my own rage, when they tricked me,
... and I get grateful today...
because, in a sense, they helped me find a semblance of peace.
... Yet, while I give it a try to step forward, on behalf of someone else, again, editing this incredible Brookdale show...
I have these other views, simultaneous... I have to find peace in.
...because I got these souls around me, on the other side,
... and some just so happen to be kids...
... some agree that the protection of kids is more important than success.
A few years back, I helped a great Yogini get into a Disney movie.
One of her premiere heart slaying songs was a song she wrote called,
"Eyes to the Sun", words her grandmother said to her, that helped her soar.
Showcasing the brilliant performances she did of that song and others,
...and the packed houses,
my footage was instrumental in getting her into that Disney film.
then, on that set...
She met a really egotistically obnoxious famous star,
and that road, for her, brought her to choices,
away from ever wanting to be one, her self....
I felt bad... because I had filmed her uniting whole auditoriums,
of highly motivated people.... women dancing so safe, with their tops off. ...and reminding all of them aobut innocence, and about community,
... and safety for the kids, ... and working together.
She was one of the few I stepped forward to help, completely.
If anybody could have made that step work, it was her,
... except I wasn't next to her while she was picked clean by the vultures.
Now , she is a massage therapist/healer ...
healing folks, instead of ingroups,
one on one,
living in the outbacks of Mexico.
... and I have hours and hours of her kick-as performances
... filmed like no other can film...
the unknown Tarantino, the unknown Rodriquez...
... but at least I don't have to live with a fiasco like "From Dusk til Dawn".
I guess I will have to eat these words, if I ever work with Tarantino,
which... by the way... is actually a possiblitity someday,
... yeah.. through obscure connections, I share a sort of back alley with him.
Ce le Vie...
we are all connected.
30 years ago,
I made a pledge to use media wisely.
A spiritual vow along other lines overlaps that.
so... few have seen my work,
... but those who have, are just as affected by it,
...as they are affected by my paintings and my songs.
... and it is entirely possible that stuff I filmed,
... will last longer than any of us.
Gerhardt Richter makes sense to me, he is/was a mirror...
Same goes for Peter Coyote.
Kris...Willie... Johnny... Joan... June Carter...and others.
If these, among those. liviing, and souls on the other side
meet each other, through us...
around you... around me,
... it would make sense to me,
why it's taken 2 years to complete this current project,
the Brookdale Lodge concert...
... that's too more years that living kids got to grow
... in relation to their living parents.
If I had done my work in a week, back then,
surely the person I filmed, would be doing world tours...
away from her kids... more often...
And the kids , aren't they more important than that?
It makes sense, at least, for me,
that I also had to grow enough to get beyond the tragedy of Jessica,
... or Sierra... or Sarah... or Marsden, and others...
...those kids of other parents, who jumped out of this world,
...seemingly too early.
I realize I am getting out of my own way,
by noticing, that I notice this...
while still having my work to do today,
I cannot do the work, unless I offer this,
my testimony.
I am not a regular mechanic...
I am not a regular film maker,
artist... or song-writer... producer.
I am closer to the kinds of artists like Gerhardt Richter.
Do a few beautiful things just for the beauty,
doing a few beautiful things to make a difference.
and living to know the difference.
and paying the price for the sacrifice.
Understanding that sensing, feeling, knowing...
these things are only one thing,
feeling responsible for them, by feeling them, is another.
Between the two,
I got to refresh my memory of the many great souls,
more than I mentioned here,
...who used their time wisely and console my gratitude,
...and gradual awakening,
to the vows for living in harmony,
and the price that can feel like is necessary to be paid for such vigilance,
as I rise to the level I can live with, and be known for,
...and which will surely translate to comfrot and peace..
Between the two, there's always a green tomatoe, on the edge of ripe,
I get to rip in to and savor,
noticing that tasty is tasty... and damn tasty it is!!!!
... and the snow was necessary...
yeah... the snow was... necessary!
www.ARTintoLIFE.com
http://www.zazzle.com/toekneestanger*
I hadn't watched the news or weather reports,
but I could feel the stir in the air.
Time to rake the leaves..
... and I still felt work to do,
...walked around the property,
...gathered the last flowers.
Put them on the dining room table,
... all in one vase...
Even the indoor house plants pined for attention,
I made cuttings of the philodendrons,
Arranged them in a large old yogurt container,
knowing they were gonna increase the indoor jungle.
build oxygen for the winter months.
Resting outside, with my pipe and some Captain Black,
tobacco I had been introduced to by one of my mentors,
... many years ago.
I thought of him, Charles Barnes, and the many years
which he had spent with his friends,
Georgia O'keefe, Imogene Cunningham, Ansel Adams,
and many of the Bohemian artists
of the 40's abstract and moderninst,
and California Impressionist communities.
Letting my thoughts travel back to those eras...
places I'd seen in his phtographs when I visited his studio,
and immersed myslef in his stories of those good old days
... around California and New Mexico,
and Brown County Indiana... and elsewhere,
in the 30's 40's 50'... early 60's
Where communities of artists gathered, Bhemian style,
shared ideas and ideals, the men who loved women,
and their friends who they accepted, no maater the swing...
their free form poetry, dance, music, art-all nighters,
sharing models, painting, cooking art food,
sharing free verse... those ancient balck and white photos,
and sepia tones with the sacredness of the human form,
memorialized beyond vanity or modesty... artistically
left behind in huge painitngs with thrown paint.
the photos of splattered colors everywhere,
the smiling faces of the immortal qualities of
artist pushing the edge of beauty...
beyond false judgement or lousy skepticsism,
towards the limits of imagination, featured in
beauty that still sort of lasts while it fades in memory,
unmistakable in the infinity of the shared
joy of creative fluidity...embracing the sacred,
while getting loaded, dancing,... painting everything in sight,
then sleeping on floors and cooking each other breakfast,
and going at it again... and more free music...
recited lyric and song,
posed for each other...
lived free and artfully...
It was/is easy to picture it.
Before TV.
The same unmistakable vast moments we all share,
when we know we have won the war against
despair, by sharing the beauty...
The times I visited Charles, were after he had had his stroke,
and about a week after I walked up to Mellencamp,
and bent his ear about the truth of real music beyond fame...
asked him to listen to mys tuff... he'd refused,
but stayed on the porch with me, anyway,
shared ideas for that half hour and looked at my art cards.
Later, it seemed he had answers for some of my questions,
showcasing his own route towards the painter he decided to be.
But I'd ended up about a mile from the "lil Bastard's" studio,
at Charles place, after being told about the old Bohemian,
he had had a stroke a couple years before,
but foks had told me of his world accalimmed friends,
the group he had traveled inside of ... in this world.
His days at Abiqu with Georgia...
times shared with Ansel.
That wasn't the reason, I went over there, well...
I went over there becasue I wanted to see, first hand,
a kind of artist who lived for the art of doing the art.
...and sure enough...it was instant recognition...
Most folks couldn't understand anything he said...
but I found a perfect use for my psychic skills,
we'd sit for hours and share perception about compositon,
color, and he'd give me a tour of his albums of photos,
arm in arm iwht these icons most folks could only dream
... of sharing a lunch with.
He'd show me letters from each of them...
a note they'd written, and invitation for a sketch trip
to the ghost ranch...
I understood every word.
But... more than that.
I understood the spirit beneath the words,
I sensed I was getting a view into a style of creative life,
that if I chose... I might get close to,
but could never quite match...
... tv... the news... the various machinations
of our recent advanced culture,
all but drowning out any possibility of anything close
to quiet rich, accoustically music filled natural living.
All the while, while I smoked the Captain Black,
remembering Charles and knowing for certian
...that he is on the other side, now.
Might be even mixed with the air that surrounded the
pipe tobacco...maybe ... might even be ,
...the reason for the richness of the memory,
right then...
and ... I couldn't help; but find myself,
noticing that I wondered if any such
communities of free flowing, big thought, idea moving
artists still exist, except in the deep jungles of Peru...
Iceland... or off the grid in Mauii...
or New Zealand...
and noticing... I was right then...
...dreaming about someday starting one.
Maybe on some other planet,
cause the idiots furthering war and spy everything,
had /have pretty much ruined every square inch of peace,
left on this sorry planet.
It was the Captain Black tobacco... and the promise
of transition and transformation....
that kep me from imploding right then.
and ... I guess realizing that,
as long as you and I... dear reader,
can combine long distance force through creative intent,
maybe.. maybe maybe...
some kind of art reality will re-emerge beyond quotas,
options, and investors.
Arriving again as purity of creative intent.
Available to be interpreted, in it's sacred austere self.
awards or no awards...
I tell you what... the other day, I tried to watch
.. an ice skater, a woman beauty, do her routine on tv,
and there was nothing except the commentator's evaluations.
Holy Jesus. Inbelievable.
Is there any chance such a piece of beautiful God Art,
could just dance free in beauty with music,
without some joker explaining that the triple axel
was incomplete?
we are lost.
the ship sank... folks.
this american, whatever it was supposed to be,
...ship sank.
It's turned into a media recuse unit for the imposters,
and the case workers for the lost.
Sorry.
I guess if I really meant that, I'd a sailed outa here.
... anyway.
Just a day or so ago,
I'd heard back from Peter Coyote.
A guy I'd hoped to meet, and had met in 2002, or 2001...
He had just thanked me for my mail,
but said he was busy
working on his own projects,
couldn't remember me...
... so between the yard work, and Captain Black,
... I returned to my computer
... and sent a jpg of how I looked back in those days,
of 2001...
when I had met him at sfmoma...
in Frisco,
knowing that he probably didn't realize I was on a wave of beauty,
wandering through
Gerhardt Richter's wide catalogue of art.
It was as close as I had ever been to the fredom of creative flow,
bearing witness to that full scale visual testimony
that the sacredness of art beyond evaluation,
is beauty impossbile to own or evaluate,
you have to swim insde it... immerse your self in it,
allow it to feed your soul...
and rise you to the real level you can bear witness,
that is your real pure power of being,
your potential...that we are all,
truly.
...if somehow we release from the
square head thoughts,and struggle
designed to bind/tie us to incompleteness,
so we can keep buying insurance and ski-doos,
and guns for shooting what we can't understand.
wouldn't it be interesting,
if art had been the chosen
shared entertainment...
...rather than tv police shows,
... and murder and war ???
Noticing the effect Richter's paintings
of his daughters with their kids,
breast feeding, showing that beauty, that sublime silence,
that treasure of stillness... perfect.
Noticing the effect of Richter's famous
"Ver Meer" painting... had had on me,
and still has... this winter,
and remembering the gallery of other solemn paintngs,
Richter had dedicated to the German activist martyrs,
watching the people walk past all that art, that beauty...
grabbing for the next image,
while Pete and his fiance contemplated each one deeply,
and even deeper...Just Like I was doing.
It was unmistakeable.
Three of us were there, among the hundreds.
It was bound to happen
that I would thank him for his work,
of similar velocity, through characters/parts
he had played in so many films...
... remembering that, ...on that day I met him there,
I'd not even understood how many voice overs
he had completed by then,
all beautiful, consciousness raising
and transformational work,
for our society and all our shared future.
IN a sense, he'd left his mark,
while so many of the imposters of that busness,
elbowed there way for awards..., for blockbusters,
for trinkets that mean nothing.
that guy had a legacy... still ongoing.
among the fools.
still leaving beauty for you!
and for me.
In the back yard again...
while watching the tomatoe plants and green peppers,
full of fruit... but knowing the time had come to pick them free,
... not realizing the snow REALLY was, really coming,
I reminisced about the week before meeting Peter,
3 years back...and knowing that he wouldn't believe me,
that I had actually seen him in a tv movie,
the week before he and his fiance, had walked near me at sfmoma,
and I had said, loud to the invisible air, these words;
"God, I want to meet that guy, someday...
and I want to thank him"
And noticing that those words had hung extra long in the air,
that they had glowed that day...
I had realized something insde the idea of it, ws ripe for the time.
And then, last week,
reminding myself how it had all happened,
within a week, I had found myself, Up in the city,
at the Richter exhibit...
and I had seen the world in front of me light up bright,
as I had walked into the first gallery,
seeing a clamouring cluster of people rushing everywhere,
grabbing for the art... but not seeing any of it,
it seemed, ... hectic, clamouring and chaotic,
around a painter I can believe in,
Gerhardt Richter,
yetr sensing more,
becaue the air was GLOWING folks!
I noticed that I had been stopped in my tracks.
I could feel an inside signal.
something I had trained myself, for years... to acknowledge.
... so I stopped. I held still... I sensed it... what was it?
I had stood silent, gathering myself,
I waited.
and I asked... "something important is happening,
...what is it?"
I'd held still, and found I had been drawn,
energized towards, these two people among the many,
about 50 feet from em,
in the far off corner, a man and a woman
with their backs to me...
they were deep into what they explored in Richter's wrok,
and then... they turned around.
I asked myself..."ok... so this is somebody...
and I am still...so... who is it?"
I walked away... to the next gallery.
then I turned back, and I looked again,
as I also looked at the paintings there,
I heard the words... in my inner ear,
..."Peter Coyote".
Silent, in my heart and mind.
....I was dumstruck.
Yes.
Holy shit.
Peter coyote.
The guy I said I wanted to meet.
No shit.
exactly as it happened, folks.
truth.
Then, I had remembered,
that the week before,
... like I wrote just now,
...I had "requested", to the invisioble air,
... to meet him.
It's against my policy to invade other people's lives.
No matter how many times I have had this expereince,
whether it ws the sensation that I would go and see Mellencamp,
and then...did...
or this time, where I sensed the "beyond"
... of co-incindence
beyond co-incidence,
it's always like the very first time,
and I always have to climb through my own ego,
and wrestle my doubting mind.... from interfere - ing.
I wasnt' there to get something, to lean on him,
or to invade.
but the moment was real...
To me... it's about honor.
... and respect.
Not about being a fan, or invasion.
My process along these lines,
is about allowing the distance,
and measuring the strides, or the journey.
especially my own breath.
and balance
Yet... my "guides" and perhaps my path,
reminded me that I was there to see Richter's paintings,
and ...I had also requested,
that moment I found myself inside of...
standing nest to Pete, sharing a view of a Richter masterpiece,
letting it be natural, holy and obviously meant to be,
yet huge... while no big deal,
all at once.
His idea, as well as mine,
even though I had requested it,
noticing that it had it's own life,
complete, and perfect,
Walking among that range of art,
I had felt completely in league with Richter,
yet...I have a wider range... than he,
it seems so absurd to say so,
even harder to explain, because... I know so,
and still ... to be anoonymous,
unknown by any of them... yet I KNEW them,
through their work!
What a ride...
I felt like I was among equals,
and let me tell you this,
this includes you,
yeah... you too.
we all have such potential,
the questions we all face on the path of survival,
while each of us share even more unlimited potential,
how cramped we all are,
no matter what we relase, create, participate in,
it could be so much bigger,
I am convinced,
if we lived... say... on the beaches of some far off islands
generatins ago,
long before so called industrial civilizations
replaced all such harmony with machine fed war based ego,
ripping and tearing...
there I was, among two known greats,
each sharing, unlimited style,
and knowing this too, is my world,
and now... right next to another who travels a simlar path,
.. a kind of role model, about 12 years ahead of me on this path,
Peter Coyote...
It was too big to "grock"....
I took the time it takes to settle down.
Seeing the huge walls covered in tapestry of color , huge wide and abstract,
and then the very next batch social commentary,
another gallery comprised of tender sublime grace,
and yet other paintings , painted in styles fluid and consistent,
looking like Van Gogh, Ver Meer,
the great impressionists..
... to see what it takes to allow such creativity,
between paying the landlords, and the kings and queens
their rent ... giving "cesear what is cesear's"... so to speak
I could sense the struggle,
that being Gerhardt Richter must be,
and to read, at the same time, in his writings on those walls,
that he bears witness to it,
I kept being "slayed" by the work.
So powerful, that I could barely move,
...barely contain myself.
Experiencing this,
then seeing Peter Coyote
and his fiance
in the same relationship to the art.
Also "slayed" by it's beauty.
Noticing that, and realizing that my own artistc range was similar.
Yet sensing the spiritual path we all walk,
in relatin to this creative process,
which in essence, only gets competed, if witnessed,
by the people it feeds.
Noticing that while I was there,
among those many masterpieces,
I had also met many,
some class mates, some fellow travelers on the path,
all straining at similar chains,
designed by the greedy and the machines,
so we would keep buying thier coffee, or cars,
or whatever,
... and all of us suffer for this disconnection.
so few get to rise above it,
and the few who do,
find few to do the dance with,
and finally... undesrtanding,
that I was there, inside that moment,
it wsn't the academy awards, or the grammy's or
even an artist's community with kids running barefoot,
I had somehow arrived in that moment...
must have desereved it...
and..the moment was bigger than I,
realizing that it was not up to me to hold back, then.
at first, I walked up to Peter and made it a short and sweet,
offered a respectiful greeting, my gratitude,
then pulled myself away to the memorial gallery,
the one that had been dedicated to the activist martyrs
who'd all died in suspicious ways in Germany,
paintings by Richter of obscene slayings...
... some in prison... some in the streets,
some splayed out.
Knowing the price of standing for such beliefs
... in my own life,
had also included ...the cost.
Somehow, I had survived.
Maybe because I learned to bend,
rather than change,
to duck.. and to instead remove myself...
... to instead learn about creative intent,
and decline war with the war makers.
Knowing it all too well...
the challenge represented by the greedy who walk ahead of us,
drill out of sight, and suck the earth dry,
leaving it baren.
I was leaving that gallery,
because I knew it too well,
as courage,
yet decdlined the rage...
then saw Pete's future wife,
deep in thought there... taking it all in...
as if it were, exactly what it was,
a funeral gallery,
a memorial to the courageous,
so willing to die for society's blindness,
... I stopped and went back...
Drank deeper, in silence, ...too.
right to the edge of tears.
for such inconsolable wounds.
Realizing that the honesty of Gerhardt Richter
... was empowerment,
and getting a fresher view,
... of the part all art can play, in bearing witness to truth,
and noticing that, thjough I had steeered away from certain imagery,
such power was also in my paintings,
media, songs...access tv shows,
... as well as in the sacred walks each of us makes,
away from such potential inside our creative power,
...and realizing that, art or no art,
...it also plays out in the lives of others.
Suddenly..I was inside a renewal, a rebirth.
Holy.
These are the thoughts, and more, which I was embracing,
while realizing that I had to pick the green tomatoes...
... last week, in my temporary back yard,
... and as all these slow and steady realizations hit me...
it was starting to snow.
Finding meaning in the moment,
I finished my pipe, then got up and started,
the art of picking the green tomatoes.
In the weeks since, they have provided many a tasty bite,
to combine sweetness with the hint of sour...
and knowing that there's still a bowl full,
still slowly ripening,
a couple of tasty moents each and every day,
ripening, like tomatoes do...
in the dark... away from the sun,
...as I write this.
I am editing footage I shot at the Brookdale lodge,
from 2 years back,
my idea to shoot it,
to create a step forward,
with no budget,
for a singer songwriter friend,
it's a big step topwards all the things I just mentioned.
Releasing the beauty to a wider audience,
as a sort of sacrifice of love and art.
Giving someone somehting they could never afford to buy,
a step forward. Because you deserve to be touched,
by her songs and music.
Even if she struggles to maintain her marriage,
and family and still do it for the sake of our betterment,
without backers, without awards, or a budget,
I use this as my art work.. again,
because we need to see it wider and soar towards it's destiny,
or the world will just get grayer, and darker...
I challenged myslef to notice barriers,
walls... that seemd to infiltrate the ease of how this could have gone,
explainations for the computer crashing...
for the struggle,
for the edge of loss that seems to invade this,
so... Yesterday I traveled into the internet,
and discovered there were ghosts in that place,
where i filmed...
no kidding,
no wonder,
so....I read more about the Brookdale Lodge ghost.
One I had sensed, yet never consciously knew about...
A symbol for the struggle,
a moral to the story,
a caution...in the wind.
and slowing,
...releasing the dead-lines,
surrendering to the beauty of looking into this reflection,
... I am coming to understand
why I could never play music there.
At the Brookdale Lodge,
In all these years...
Why it was even, hard to eat dinner there,
why I could never stop there for long,
sit around a beer... or take a tour...
Yet, to help someone else,
because she is world class,
as good as Annie DiFranco,
...I have since filmed there, more than once,
but, now understanding that the only parameters
such doors were worth walking through,
for me,
were...on behalf of others...
Yeah I have felt roadblocks,
the walls and barriers around that footage I have filmed,
ever since,
and I needed to know why.
For me... it was a work of art,
to develop the courage and release my ideas,
so I could see the barriers at all,
rather than failure,
to understand the barriers were real,
and then to see the sorrow,
which those reasons called barriers had shielded me from.
And today I am editing one of those performances for DVD.
Becasue I had gathered enough courage to look deep enough,
so that I could retrieve the footage,
from a sort of limbo,
I found a sad story of a life lost,
a little girl who was just playing,
and the wounds of her death.. which still hover there.
today.
Gradually, understanding why it took almost 2 years to face the footage.
The girl who drowned there in the 40's has been seen by several people,
... searching for her mother,
...and some say her mother wanders the halls in tears,
in a search of her too.
she had been playing by the indoor creek,
fell in, and was found drowned...
Years later, another girl had drowned in the pool,
...closed to the public since,
Many gangsters stopped over there, back in those days gone by,
as well as movie stars... and the elite... of society.
Whatever transpired there, by the gangsters,
...required passageways,
hidden rooms... secrets.
Whenever I stopped to visit the Brookdale lodge,
... over the 14 years I was in the Bay area,
it always felt like a dark graveyard.
Not only because of the ghosts,
but...possibly also because of the range of fears and despair,
such losses continue to resurrect,
as well as the activity of gangsters that went on there,
during other times,
while the other tragedies happened.
Some say bodies are buried under the dining room.
But it is/was also a fact that the city Boulder Creek,
where the Brookdale Lodge was built,
...is also a site, that was a burial ground for the Ohlone Indians,
and they say those tribes always stayed clear for such reasons,
...the burial sites, there, ... are more than one...
The secret passages built under the Brookdale lodge and secret rooms,
were built for the famous and the gangsters...
...and were used in ways we will never fully know.
all I can say, is there has always been a definite unsettled quality,
to the place, for me... also the town.
It was , at first, the obvious landing spot I could never accept,
Lots of trendy shops,
great restaurants,
possible good galleries to show my work...
but for me... never could be home, or feel welcoming,
even though I tried that one too,
20 years ago...
and then again over the past 14 years...
The Brookdale Lodge, has morphed, many times,
... the place has existed for over a hundred years,
and many parties, concerts, gatherings, have occurred in all eras.
Two drownings.
Neither experience seems to have been fully cleared.
And both, as well as others... witnessed as ghosts
... hauntings ... witnessed by many people, .
Yet... I found myself filming there 2 years ago,
...then filming again a week afterwards.
I can easily and very clearly sense the place,
after being inside there,
which is unigue and points to something more,
I remember the dining room, the bar room... the indoor creek,
the garden, the parking lot... the bathroom,
the pond and the balcony.
...All too clearly,
...and still can sense the energy,
...the sort of fog...just as clear,
as the day I filmed there...
I felt those places singed into my memory,
too deep.
Reading about them yesterday,
and on the internet, these past few days,
I have come to understand the road blocks
I had felt around completing these projects filmed there,
My spiritual vows overlapped the need to create media.
And I bow to the vows... no matter how much
... the money I might have gotten, could have been necessary.
Whatever I did there was "on spec"... in a sense... for free.
...anyway...
How this all releates to Peter Coyote,
... and this footage I am editing,
is this...
I've also been working on a script of the times I shared around Jessica Dubroff,
the 9 year old girl who died in a plane crash, flying across country.
and her family...
Somebody I knew as a family of friends,
who I had filmed for my access tv show,
and whom I had visited...many times...
Yeah.
another child that had passed over, "early".
When I wrote out the various parts for the script,
I know that at least 3 of them could easily be played by Peter,
...for example, he'd be a shoe-in for the role of Jess' father...
...and others could be played by Kris Kristoofferson,
... for example, as the flying instructor...
...Kris is another person I recently re-connected with...
Just to thank , for how he has walked his life path.
But neither of these guys has much time... these days...
,,, they are keeping closer to their families,
and it seems absurd to try to get such folks involved in playing
roles about kids that lost lives while adults seemed to be asleep at the wheel,
it sort of makes little sense to further any part of such equations.
So.. meeting these guys,
and then not doing the rest, not getting an agent and pushing a script araound,
seems far easier, than the silliness of another tv movie.
I mean, wouldn't I rather those guys just didn't get interfered with?
...both he and Pete have inspired me.
and that's gotta be good enough.
yet...to understand the overlap of all this,
you have to know that I intend to go and see a concert, finally,
that an old friend, Joan Baez will be playing in a wek or so,
... maybe I will hand deliver this Brookdale concert demo to her,
because i'd like to film a Joan concert someday...
and... besides, I think she would love sharon's music.
... Yeah... I want to see Joan again,
it's been along time since we had lunches.
Ease of conversation,away form the trappings of fame.
I miss it.
I may be able to film one of her concerts someday,
or interview her, in the way that only I can,
but it won't be about doing it to get somehwere on Joan's fame.
It will be about having lunch with a friend.
And bringing back some of that for the world,
to pass it along a few generations by filming it,
but not with some top heavy crew.
my simple solitary style.
easy.
simple.
non-invasive.
sincere.
not like Scorsese, who did a great job, last year,
but like I would do, a completely different view,
and one requiring a guy like me,
somebody unknown with no agenda.
but...
listento this,
... I mean...
...check it out,
Joan had used to live at a place up the hill in the Bay area,
.. a place called "Struggle Mountain".
There was a little girl who had also drowned in the pool there,
when it was a commune, in the early 70's,
not an incident that had involved Joan,
but others who lived there...
A tragedy of a certain day...
Feeling any chills up and down your spine yet?
These past few days, and this past week...
I started to piece this all together,
as a certain view that i was seeing,
...in relation to the Brookdale ghosts.
There are many symbols inside of these tragedies.
I have been releasing my judgement,
... on the parts played by the parents.
...and it has helped me trash my first script ideas,
in favor of a better version, with regards to my friend Jessica,
and Lisa, ... her mother.
At least for me,
hearing these stories...
knowing about the Brookdale lodge ghost,
it's all no good,
unless it includes a type of redemption.
the question has got to be,
if knwoing aboutthese things matters so much to me,
then what part of the equation can I play,
could there be a certain type of creative project,
that steers us all, who hear about these things,
towards a lesson learned,
towards beauty...?
This past summer,
to get ready to complete the Brookdale concert editing,
I have had to deal with all the times I have heard about,
or what I have seen,
... of these kinds of experiences,
... and how/why I feel so deeply affected,
...in my own life, first hand.
i remember the time I painted a portrait,
back in Iowa, for parents of a kid that died ina corn filed,
lost on acid...
abandoned by his friends.
Diving into the challenge, for his parents,
I was blown away by the image my brush creeated,
by ...The holiness inside his eyes,
His friends had left him out there... alone,
...it took 3 weeks to find his body,
yet...
the painting that came through my brush ws redemption,
the brush did it... not me,
and I was blwon away.
Just like these other "tragic accidents",
where the parents, the care takers,
seem to have been lost or confused, or blind,
... on a certain day, yet have to l;ive with such knowledge,
...the days the kids went to the other side,
seems to also have inside it,
a potential for beauty,and learning.
Realizing that this was part of a path I have,
which is about making a difference,
if I can... where I can... if possible...
to help find that beuaty... and convey it somehow.
Sometiems a creative path can help us,
by relaying a message back form the other side,
through the eyes/souls of the presence inside the paintings
Isn't this similar to being able to understand the language
used by a stroke victim, such as Charles Barnes?
Others couldn't understand his words, I could.
For many years, I have painted of native americans,
and have chosen the various subjects,
by asense I have, for what they want to reveal from where they are NOW,
though their lives had been cut down by the greedy,
I found compassion pouring out of my bruch,
and out of their painted eyes.
and it took my breath away.
I was always humbled.
because I knew I held blame on those who had cut them down,
and I was instead "slayed by the spirit" of peace, empathy,
and brotherhood...
and these kids that seem to have fallen,
becasue of our upside down society,
are souls such as these.
Brookdale lodge in the 40's , was not a safe place for kids.
Friends I know who live up on skyline,
at that place called Struggle Mountain,
recently transformed that spot where the little girl Sierra had died,
...into a beautiful peaceful garden.
For too many years... it seemed, they have a shared wound,
of a that memory of a drowning tragedy, in the 70's.
NOW they are slowly replentishing the energy of the dreams
... upon which it was founded,
and which had brought them all together there,
...in the first place. And kids that contribute to the building they do,
... are kids the same age that Sieerra would have been if she had lived.
A commune of close freinds seeking to create a new,
a better world... in spite of the shared wound...
demonstrating they can also live for the future,
while honoring the dreams of the past... and the joy shared.
...these ideals did not shield the child...then,
bu the lesson, and the rebirth of the ideals,
can shiled the future kids.
Don't get me wrong,
I am not casting judgement or blame.
don't get me wrong...
I am not trying to convey simplicity or fantasy.
I am explaining, first of all,
.. that the residual grief I found around these varous spots,
... knocked me to my knees,
... caused me to be frozen... in grief.
But the tears, though necessary and good,
...have had their day.
...Yes, this week,
while contemplating the green tomatoes,
the coming snow...
...I finally found out about the Brookdale ghost,
and I understand more about why that hovering energy
surrounding this project, as well as my script
... about the times I spent around Jessica Dubroff,
had to get witnessed, honored, grieved again..
and finally released,
again....
These people, living and passed,
in my world, in my belief,
...are all part of our world.
We live among them, and they live among us.
and the lessons, all share similar cross-over paths.
...similar ideals for a better world,
perhaps found on the other side,
perhaps left here for us to find again,
and in need to be/seen completed through us,
who still have courage to try again...
I feel like I am in the center of it all,
this recent batch of stories...
... sort of bound to it... but not in a bad way,
... understanding why,
I stand ready to do my part with the art at hand,
the stpes in front of me,
in a sense, the work assigned...
but I do not go into it now, blind.
seeing can hinder, before it empowers.
not with blame and rage,
but with courage.
Whatever is worth creating,is worth doing with beauty,
and it's a commitment to this,
which is Why I have had to take my time.
It's not about making money with tragedies,
converted to a TV movie...
Unless such a movie could help us all create a better world,
where can there be peace... for any of us?
So... this equates, for me...
to... stop... stop and find a better reason, and a better focus...
or just go fishing ...instead.
Over the eyars,
... when I went ot various battlegrounds,
... to pray for the confused dead,
... in some cases, now state parks,
I did so, in secret... not as show....
I felt obligated,
to honor the urge to do those things,
which had come thorugh the expereince of touching
a life like the one lived by
a person , a soul like Chief Joseph... and others.
It was a necessary part of such a painting,
to step on such paths.
In this case, too,
there was also a sense of bearing witness.
Noticing that the veils between worlds we all need,
for living a real life,
are very thin... very thin... indeed.
We each walk the tight rope betwene the worlds.
.We can be the intention inside out.
We can be the steps we consciously take,
with the living.
while we also know we wlak on the backs fo those before us.
Not fantasy, or confusion.
and if in temporary confusion,
then lving thorugh it, while unraveling to beauty.
We cannot stop short of the beauty.
Notice,
many souls each and every day are traveling over,
it would seem to be early for some,
due to the imbalance of wealth, and the greed...
they die in despair,
feeling lost,
though trapped in a mansion,
Others, lost outside those warm mansions,
... for example, can not find the resources to embrace the beauty,
which could feed the desparate locked in materialism,
... and meanwhile,
we all know,
... that too many starved right as I wrote this,
and we will lose,
because none of us,
will ever see their beauty, their potential,
which would create peace for us all,
if shared.... if only shared like the hidden grain stored,
could have been shared with them.
to see it,
you have to be storng and courageous about your own potential,
then understand that if you can develop it,
you will have to helop deliver the ones who are locked away from it.
.. and to see it , you have to be ready,
and to be ready,
you have to practice... and get ready.
then practice, practice, practice again.
and finally... after all that,
all you have to do is arrive , 100%.
just show up.
One way is finding beauty right where you stand... sit...right now.
Another way, is to go out into the last of nature,
and practice seeing it where it was once harmony... fulfilled.
While you hear it cry.
And... for me...
this means,
just so happens also means.
noticing the beauty left ready and waiting,
right at that creek edge,
inside the Brookdale Lodge,
right where that kid played,
before she fell in,
and still waits to be brought forwards,
...as beauty,
...ever since that kid drowned at Brookdale.
Today... while I finish editing the first set,
of the conert I filmed there,
I have to look into the reflection,
of that pool while I walked by that very spot,
and uncerstand,
i saw the beauty..
... and now .. .if I choose it,
I can bring it back out of such a reflection,
through the editing I do ... perhaps between tears,
replaced with beauty.
IN my friend's stellar Brookdale Lodge performance,
I take special note of her song "Holy Water",
which she sang there, that night.
... and whether she knows it or not,
I think she had an audience of "one" hovering nearby...
Until I could understand , well,
I had to stop and explore why that song rang so golden.
Wrestled, "so to speak" out of the jaws of tragedy.
What I told Willie Nelson,
...about this prayer I've had,
for "Brick Walls", he said he understood fully.
and he has his own version.
No surprise.
anyone who wants to walk forward and be where you are 100%,
is bound to see what you are passing along the way.
what you see, you see for a reason.
so... work on letting yourself see.
What some call success,
... is not always the goal....
I know, I need to pray to see the unseen goal,
something more like fulfillment at the right time.
Not fulfillment grabbed from a second ahead,
but the kind that walks up to you,
and greets you,
while you walk towards it.
I could have been on that plane, that day,
with Jessica Dubroff.
I would have had to insist on it.
Then again,
I think I was more about,
NOT getting in the plane that day... ,
so...in the case of Jessica's plane crash,
though hundreds of miles away,
I had to see that I stayed clear fo the whole deal,
for my reasons.
I can't evaluate the choice of others,
just becasue I would have my choice...
They hadn't taken me along,
to document the flight,
as they had said they would.
So... I never got the chance to be the stubborn hol out,
...saying "F**k the interviews,
"F**k the press,
F**k the media...
"F**k the world record",
... or "F**k the breakthroughs,
the money... the t-shirts and hats",
let's Get there first!"
It took years to realize this,
necessary years.
but doing so, helped me hear the ghost of Brookdale sooner,
release the shadow of an idea of a lesson,
and get the REAL idea of the real lesson,meant for me.
It's a style of success most would refuse.
For me, maybe not for you, for me. my path.
Yet I get to see these so called "mistakes of others"
Or to assemble ideas about what mistakes our leaders make today.
All shadows of reality,
not reality.
Reality is what I can create today, that is honoring my potential,
and what can you create today, that can honor yours,
and how will it inspire others to rise to theirs?
So..Even now,
I know i have to be very, very, very careful,
about any script I may want to write about anything.
Becasue, for me it matters what such things encourage in others.
....some things are more important than
a TV movie of the week,
or a show as SFMOMA.
Or sharing a movie project with
Peter Coyote, Willie Nelson, Joan Baez, or Kris,
... or Tarantino.
Personally, I would be very embarrassed, if I were Quentin.
He's written some classic scenes...
... moved the world in a hip sort of way,
... but just like Swartzenegger,
... he's got a lot of dues to pay for the folks he influenced to do harm to others.... through what he created.
I would nto want to bear such burdens.
I could never live with myself, if I were either of them.
What kind of progress could a soul make,
which would help repair the damage it creates on the road to an Oscar?
I prayed for Brick Walls, and watched folks grab my share of the loot,
then watched them do stupid things drunk on power.
They taught me about my own rage, when they tricked me,
... and I get grateful today...
because, in a sense, they helped me find a semblance of peace.
... Yet, while I give it a try to step forward, on behalf of someone else, again, editing this incredible Brookdale show...
I have these other views, simultaneous... I have to find peace in.
...because I got these souls around me, on the other side,
... and some just so happen to be kids...
... some agree that the protection of kids is more important than success.
A few years back, I helped a great Yogini get into a Disney movie.
One of her premiere heart slaying songs was a song she wrote called,
"Eyes to the Sun", words her grandmother said to her, that helped her soar.
Showcasing the brilliant performances she did of that song and others,
...and the packed houses,
my footage was instrumental in getting her into that Disney film.
then, on that set...
She met a really egotistically obnoxious famous star,
and that road, for her, brought her to choices,
away from ever wanting to be one, her self....
I felt bad... because I had filmed her uniting whole auditoriums,
of highly motivated people.... women dancing so safe, with their tops off. ...and reminding all of them aobut innocence, and about community,
... and safety for the kids, ... and working together.
She was one of the few I stepped forward to help, completely.
If anybody could have made that step work, it was her,
... except I wasn't next to her while she was picked clean by the vultures.
Now , she is a massage therapist/healer ...
healing folks, instead of ingroups,
one on one,
living in the outbacks of Mexico.
... and I have hours and hours of her kick-as performances
... filmed like no other can film...
the unknown Tarantino, the unknown Rodriquez...
... but at least I don't have to live with a fiasco like "From Dusk til Dawn".
I guess I will have to eat these words, if I ever work with Tarantino,
which... by the way... is actually a possiblitity someday,
... yeah.. through obscure connections, I share a sort of back alley with him.
Ce le Vie...
we are all connected.
30 years ago,
I made a pledge to use media wisely.
A spiritual vow along other lines overlaps that.
so... few have seen my work,
... but those who have, are just as affected by it,
...as they are affected by my paintings and my songs.
... and it is entirely possible that stuff I filmed,
... will last longer than any of us.
Gerhardt Richter makes sense to me, he is/was a mirror...
Same goes for Peter Coyote.
Kris...Willie... Johnny... Joan... June Carter...and others.
If these, among those. liviing, and souls on the other side
meet each other, through us...
around you... around me,
... it would make sense to me,
why it's taken 2 years to complete this current project,
the Brookdale Lodge concert...
... that's too more years that living kids got to grow
... in relation to their living parents.
If I had done my work in a week, back then,
surely the person I filmed, would be doing world tours...
away from her kids... more often...
And the kids , aren't they more important than that?
It makes sense, at least, for me,
that I also had to grow enough to get beyond the tragedy of Jessica,
... or Sierra... or Sarah... or Marsden, and others...
...those kids of other parents, who jumped out of this world,
...seemingly too early.
I realize I am getting out of my own way,
by noticing, that I notice this...
while still having my work to do today,
I cannot do the work, unless I offer this,
my testimony.
I am not a regular mechanic...
I am not a regular film maker,
artist... or song-writer... producer.
I am closer to the kinds of artists like Gerhardt Richter.
Do a few beautiful things just for the beauty,
doing a few beautiful things to make a difference.
and living to know the difference.
and paying the price for the sacrifice.
Understanding that sensing, feeling, knowing...
these things are only one thing,
feeling responsible for them, by feeling them, is another.
Between the two,
I got to refresh my memory of the many great souls,
more than I mentioned here,
...who used their time wisely and console my gratitude,
...and gradual awakening,
to the vows for living in harmony,
and the price that can feel like is necessary to be paid for such vigilance,
as I rise to the level I can live with, and be known for,
...and which will surely translate to comfrot and peace..
Between the two, there's always a green tomatoe, on the edge of ripe,
I get to rip in to and savor,
noticing that tasty is tasty... and damn tasty it is!!!!
... and the snow was necessary...
yeah... the snow was... necessary!
www.ARTintoLIFE.com
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posted by Toe Knee at 1:22 PM
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