It's probably widely known, but it would probably bear mentioning again that the Fest was subtitled 'Back to the Garden'. It truly felt like we were in a 'bubble' (who said that?) of warmth and generosity and tolerance and giving and friendship, and of course, song! I don't remember any Biblical mention of Adam and Eve and the kids jamming in Eden, and I don't know on exactly which day of Creation the guitar was created, but the extent to which these above qualities abounded at the Fest are making it VERY hard for me to get back to life as usual. I don't even want to pick up the newspaper ....readin the news, and it sure looks bad. (Except I think some lost Orca whale made it home to the pod recently...)
All this lifted my heart. Thank you Ashara, and everyone there, or not there but rooting or pining (we missed you). Full Moon will be talking about THAT for some time to come. (It was a superb choice of venue) They should probably build another couple of cabins for next year (and with the bar tabs from the weekend, they probably could!) It's a ggod thing the shamans cancelled because with all that songpower we woulda KICKED THEIR BUTTS, here, there, and astrally! So I made it back to the pod, a least for a few days. Some of us got together at Ric's last night (Ashara, Maggie, Roberto, Heather, (queen of nametags and pasta), and my Barbara, and with all of Ric's incredible Native American art around us I was thinking about a Hopi creation story where, you know, the world is getting created by the GS (great spirit) and the first stage was creating twins, who were singers. They sang two tones and between them, the harmony created all matter, all the earth. So in this creation story, sound preceded substance. (I think there may even be pretty good recent physics that could be comfortable with that...) The sounds that went down last weekend and the people channeling them (Ethel included) created real substantial MAGIC. Maybe we turned back the doomsday clock a whole couple of minutes... Ashara asked us about personal high points, and so going on to mention mention only a few individual performances, let me just say that my high points were all about the HARMONY, literally and figuratively. That, and almost being made a honorary lesbian. When Henning and Christina were ending with an amazing 'Conversation' they had 75 crazies going 'doot-doo-doot' so loud it drowned out the PA. Ashara did Shower the People and Jenny and I had worked out a really nice three part harmony, but in the moment the whole room lit up with voices. And on and on... Well, you'll see. Roberto and I were saying that most of the performances were pro quality, or, say, better than almost all of 'Joni's Jazz' - you'll have you own faves but it was just uniformly-amazingly-fantastic. If I were an A&R guy from Sony with carte blanche I would have been handing out contracts left and right. My regret was that there just wasn't enough time to connect with everyone, in a deep enough way. Next Year? The good news is that Ashara is totally nuts and she's already working on that! Eveybody be well, and see you later. Chuck
