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Wednesday August 29 -- 6 PM: We arrive at the edge of Yosemite and park on the side of the road where we’ll spend the night. Several miles of cars are ahead of us and by nightfall, miles of vehicles are parked behind. We’re all here to await the opening of a music festival tomorrow. The “overnight line” has a party reputation akin to the tailgate parties in football stadium parking lots. Larry and Rosemary, the couple in the van in front of us, introduce themselves and offer Mexican beer. We accept, set up a portable table and chairs in front of our SUV and are soon deep in conversation. Larry makes his living heading the Banana Slug String Band, a group that plays for children. They will do two sets on the children’s stage at this festival. We’re soon exchanging stories of life on the road. It’s been years since Tara and I leased Stevie Ray Vaughn’s bus and seminar toured for three months at a time. Some of those experiences will always stand out in our minds. While we talk, Rosemary wraps and ties a bundle of wild sage gathered on their way here. Tara and I take a break from the conversation to put in some exercise mileage before dark. We do five miles of brisk walking along wooded paths that tend to open into circular meadows. One meadow in particular looks like a model for Tara’s meditations. “If we ever do a video meditation,” I say. “I agree,” she says. Back at the SUV, our children, Hunter and Cheyenne (15 and 13), read in the vehicle. We talk with our neighbors and others who wander by. Tie-dye T-shirts and long hair streaked with gray are the order of the day. The majority of the people are from San Francisco. Tara is reminded of her childhood, growing up with hippies in the Bay area. |
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Thursday August 30: Sleeping in the vehicle isn’t as uncomfortable as I expected, but by morning I’m wishing we had set up the tent. The festival gates open at 8 AM and we’re soon seeking the ideal camping spot. Within the hour, two large tents are up and secure. The kids set up across the road from us and are quickly off in search of friends from previous festivals. Tara and I head to the showers. To our surprise, we experience hot water. Feeling reborn, we walk through the woods watching a tent city come to life in the tall pines. We dodge trucks watering the roads to reduce dust; kids on bicycles zip around us. The temperature is 77 degrees, sun shining. People are already gathering to jam. The sound of one group of stringed instruments melds into another as we walk to the stage and food-court area. Over coffee, we talk for 90 minutes while watching the human parade. After nearly 19 years together, we never run out of conversation. After a meal at the Blue Moon Vegetarian Cafe booth, we go for a ten-mile hike along trails and dirt roads. Time passes quickly as we play with a new psychic technique Tara developed for the July Lake Arrowhead Retreat. Over the last few weeks, we’ve been invoking it, and the results have been so accurate we’ve shocked ourselves. Today, for over two hours, Tara expands the premise as we walk. Soon she’s spinning psychic predictions about everyone we know or may come to know. I play the game, coming up with and analyzing symbols, decoding them. The future? Time will tell. As we walk and talk, Tara scans the ground in search of hawk or raven feathers -- a sign of communication with her spirit guide Abenda and helpers on the other side. “Abenda talks to me in feathers,” Tara says. My wife wants a hawk feather. She finds blue jay, bluebird, yellow finch, a pink and gray, a dotted black, two grays ... “Come on, I need a hawk!” She is bitching at the spirits. Finally, returning to our camp, she finds a hawk feather a few feet from the tent. “Is Abenda being sarcastic?” I ask. “No. What you ask for you generally get. Always ask the Universe for more.” “Abundance?” “Abundance.” She weaves strands of my hair and her hair with the feathers and has soon created a fetish. “You are a shaman.” * * * * * |
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At 5:15 PM we’re in Music Meadow listening to the opening act. The festival is sold out with 5000 people attending. Twenty-six acts are scheduled to perform. Tonight’s performers are much more to Tara’s musical tastes than my own, but I’m impressed by Tony Furtado. We both have a music barometer that asks, “Would I play this music alone in my car?” Alone in the car, there’s no need to compromise music for the sake of your fellow travelers. You listen to what touches your heart. Tara wants to purchase Tony’s CD. After six hours of listening to music seated 20 feet in front of a pillar of speakers, we leave with our ears ringing, ready to fall into bed. The older I get, the more I appreciate days in which nothing could go better -- be better.
Friday August 31: As it turns out, our tent placement could have been a lot better. The families on each side of us are camping with babies who are not happy campers. They cried on and off through the night, often in stereo. I used hypnosis to filter the sound and go back to sleep. Following an ample Southwestern breakfast in the dining hall and cold showers in the bathhouse, we decide to work in camp. Tara is doing some complicated astrological equations on a friend’s chart. I’m on deadline to create another multi-tape-and-book program for Nightingale Conant, so I write. Tara is frustrated over been unable to do her exercises the last couple days. At home she puts in a daily hour of aerobics, kickboxing and pushups. She decides to work out in the tent opposed to attracting attention by kicking and punching imaginary people beneath the peaceful pine-tree environment. While sitting in my comfy chair, considering what word to put before another, I watch as she does 50 marine-style pushups. “Fifty pushups?” ”Want to do some with me?” she says, a little short of breath. We always challenge each other to do more, experience more, be more, but 50 pushups is over the top. I try to walk/run five miles a day followed by some yoga, but *!#%*! pushups? * * * * * |
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The children’s stage and recreation area are set up on the edge of Birch Lake. We skip a workshop with Irish singer Mary Black to listen to Larry’s Banana Slug String Band, which really isn’t a string band, because one of the five members plays drums. Fun music for the littles. During a late afternoon ten-mile hike, we find a remote clearing to do an art photo session. I take many beautiful pics of Tara that will not be posted on the web. Today, because my wife doesn’t plead to the feather spirits, she finds only a few feathers. Dinner is from the East Indian food booth -- chicken curry on rice with naan bread. We finish just as Mary Black takes the stage in Music Meadow. Between sets we’re amused by a group of “Deadheads” standing near our chairs. A young man in his 20s is telling a couple of 40-year olds, that if you look just right, you can see Jerry Garcia hanging from a ladder in the shadows on the moon. “Yeah, man ... I see him,” says one. “Wow,” says the other. Evidently, since the death of the Grateful Dead’s lead singer, the moon shadows have morphed. The scent of cannabis wafts over the crowd. A little more of that and Tara and I will be seeing Jerry too. Today’s featured act is Arlo Guthrie. His acoustic set is performed with a young son and daughter. It is one of the most enjoyable events I’ve ever attended. Arlo has us laughing and clapping for over two hours with stories such as his participation in the original Woodstock Music Festival. Tara loves it as much as I do. Only Arlo, Gillian Welch and Mary Gauthier drew me to this festival, but the organizers have a knack for following buzz to book hot new and emerging talents. The children prodded us to attend, and Tara and I knew we’d enjoy the overall experience. There are dozens of major music festivals in California and we like to attend a couple each year. Back at the campsite, we open a bottle of wine and talk in the dark. Forest sounds meld with guitars, banjos, mandolins, fiddles. Harmonizing female singers sound like distant sirens luring the sleepy from their tents to join the jam. We’ve been invited to a jam in the musicians housing area, but we never manage to get there. |
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“I’m not a hippie,” Tara tells me. She is barefoot, wearing a tie-dye shirt, and pulling out strands of her long dark hair to wrap into the feather fetish, she is assembling in her lap. “Oh, no,” I say. “Give me some strands of your hair,” she says. Fetish complete, Tara reads The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler. I sketch painting ideas. I don’t think I’m trying to recapture my youth, but I’m not 100-percent sure I’m not. I’ve been inching back into four-wheel drive adventures, shooting (black powder) and painting. In my younger days, as an art director with various advertising agencies, I also played the fine-art-painting game, winning lots of best-of-show awards in group shows as diverse as the NY Society of Illustrators to the Minnesota Institute of Art’s “Rose Fete.” All year I’ve been painting again. (This started with Tara suggesting nude painting last New Years Eve. See her “Personal Notebook” column.) The day before we left Malibu for Yosemite, I’d been painting all afternoon. I was talking on the phone to my friend Richard Christian Matheson as I worked the canvas. When Tara arrived home, she expressed out loud how much she liked the painting. I handed her the phone to say hello to RC. Tara said, “Wait until you see this one, Richard. It’s fantastic.” But it wasn’t fantastic to me. Better than most, but it didn’t go where I wanted to go. As Tara talked, I picked up a brush and in Jackson Pollock style, made a bold black slash across the canvas. Tara looked at me in horror. I continued to work fast, allowing a whole new painting to emerge almost as if it had a life of it’s own. Two hours later the painting was complete and one of my very best. You take a bold chance. It’s dangerous. It may not work -- you may ruin what you’ve accomplished ... but oh-h-h what a feeling of aliveness when you succeed. As I sketch ideas, I relate that experience to other areas of my life. It generates great conversation. We’ve always sought to keep life exciting, but it is also valuable to take a little inventory every now and then. Your mind can’t take boring, ho-hum or mundane for long. Research shows that if you don’t make life interesting, your mind will do it for you. Maybe fighting with your lover will help you to realize you’re alive. A sickness or accident would give you something to fight for. No thanks. My wife and I continue our hiking, exceeding our previous daily mileage, although not by plan. We take a wrong trail and miss the festival by a few miles in our attempt to return. Singer-songwriter Mary Gauthier is an out-front lesbian alt-country singer from Louisiana by way of Boston. She opens her evening set saying she just moved to Nashville and is working on her accent. Knowing how conservative the Nashville music establishment is, her songs like “Drag Queen and Limousines” must be raising a few eyebrows. Mary is a personal favorite and I’m delighted to listen to many new songs. |
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Sunday September 2: After breakfast, we visit the dude-string horses ($20 an hour to ride slowly in a line). With a hand full of grass, Tara manages to lure one horse away from the food trough. She rubs his head, talks to him. She needs a shot of horse energy. There is a revival at the lake this morning. Five of the festival acts sing gospel songs for what seems like a long, long time. We do not attend, but the music can be heard from the stage and is boosted by the campsite radios tuned to a pirate FM station covering the activities. Having showered early, I await Tara in camp while she embraces the wash-your-hair-in-ice-water routine. Several painting ideas come to life in my sketchbook. Ideas come in strange little batches, often when you’re least expecting. I thank the painting spirits. |
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Tara appreciates my artistic efforts as I appreciate hers. In the early years of our marriage, she attended Brentwood Art Center for two years. Visiting art galleries and the great art museums of the world has always been a shared passion, but it’s been years since we’ve been on the inside of the art world -- the “gallery scene.” And some major transitions seem to have occurred during the period I haven’t been paying attention. Three weeks ago, we attended a show opening to benefit a prestigious art complex in Santa Monica. Highways Gallery presented “A Night Behind Bars” -- two erotic show openings. The prison guard gave us a bar of soap when we registered and were fingerprinted. He said, “Don’t drop the soap.” We ate prison food, viewed erotic art -- some of it live (you don’t want to know). In the upstairs photo gallery, the show was titled “Wonderland -- love and hedonism ... obsession, dementia, and depravity.” The young female photographer was present to talk about her work, sans clothing. “You’re not planning any Sutphen show openings like this are you?” Tara asked. “Nah.” “Just checking.” We skip the afternoon music to hike a round-about trail into Yosemite, and talk about a book we’re planning to write together. The more research we do with astrology, palmistry and past-life regression, the more life appears to be pre-destined. Not everything, but major events, meetings and opportunities for learning. I’d prefer to think that life is all about free-will. And I know it isn’t. Tara has been helping me build a research case history on a young man who experienced a terrible accident that left him burned over most of his body and in a wheel chair for the rest of his life. Yet everything in our investigations point to the fact that he incarnated to take on this experience. A dozen factors pointed to a catastrophic experience on the day of the accident. Destiny? Last week in Sedona, a seminar participant offered to put us in touch with some high-profile disabled people, whose cause-and-effect case histories might make for enlightening reading. When it’s time for a new book, the energy always seems to begin compounding on it’s own. On a remote trail we find an artistically positioned fallen tree, Tara suggests we take more pics. The lighting is perfect for art shots. She has informed me that I too must pose as I came into the world, but we run out of film before I can take my turn. Oh, too bad? For the evening performances, the seating spirits manage to provide us with second row seats. And I didn’t even ask the Universe. Gillian Welch and David Rawlings perform an incredible set -- the musical highlight for me. Festival over, we end the day sipping coffee at a picnic table near the meadow exit, watching as thousands of people walk past on the way back to their campsites. A woman with three young stairstep children walks by holding two steaming coffees while urging the wailing younger child to “Come on, come on.” “You have your hands full,” I tease her. “This is the only place I can go and really have fun,” she says, nodding at her brood. I’m glad there are a lot of places we can go and really have fun ... and this is certainly one of them. |
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