Flesh and Bone

The wheel of the year has spun around again. Today is the Day of the Dead, All Soul’s Day, All Saint’s Day. Today, I remember and pay respects to my predecessors: my beloved departed ones, teachers of my spiritual traditions, folk hero(ine)s who inspire me, artists and writers who humble me, scholars who provide my intellectual foundation, and the nameless ancients whose gift is my DNA. We are the living flesh on the bones of these ancestors.

A relationship does not end just because one person passes away.  We carry our dead with us: in our DNA, our memories, our hang-ups, our culture. But after their death, we can choose to have a relationship with the best part of someone, and let the worst parts go. We can forgive them.

We are defined by our relationships. In some ways, we are relevant only as part of a community. Your history, life and fate of are not distinct from the history, life and fate of your community. My definition of community used to only include people who live in my time zone, as it were. I don’t mean Central Daylight Time: I mean, people who are alive at the same time as me. But the truth is that we are supported and influenced by the dead as much as the living: community looks like a circle, but it is actually a sphere that crosses the visible and invisible realms. The community is our bones. 

My physical ancestors’ bones are part of the rich soil of India and the Caribbean. The land I live on now is contains the bones of Native American people and pioneers of European descent. My intellectual and moral heritage is built on the bones of scholars, artists, warriors and healers of heritages too countless to name. While my spiritual traditions are Neo-Pagan, Vodou and Hindu, this practice of honoring one’s ancestors is practiced across the globe. 

It is not ancestor “worship” any more than throwing a birthday party for someone is worshipping them. And it looks much the same: food is offered, candles are lit, we stand around and sing. For this one day, they are the center of the circle. We acknowledge their importance to us, and honor their essential spirit.

We should not dwell in grief, but neither should we forget our dead ones. They are our bones. Bones are strength. They literally hold us up.

When you see images of bones, do you shudder? One of the reasons people tell me they fear of Vodou is “all the bones:” images of the skeletal Spirits of the Dead. Why do we fear the dead? Why is the idea of departed ones a source of horror? Vodou empowered me to confront and overcome my own fear, to build a healthy relationship with the dead.

The Vodou I practice is based in New Orleans, but that is based in Haiti and the Caribbean, which in turn is based in Africa. Follow anything back far enough, you’ll end up in Africa. Africa is our bones.

West African philosophy charts an intersection of ancestors, community and time. You seem to believe that time marches ever onward: what is gone is discarded as you look eagerly forward. We live in the present and the future is before us. The past is history. This is not true. You may not be able to see it, but the past is your bones.

The African concept of time and community helps us understand this. In the West African system, there are two kinds of time: Sasa and Zamani. Sasa is encompassed by the memory of the community's eldest to the potential lifetime of the youngest. This is “immediate” time, the time of the living. Zamani is “far” time, the temporal geography in which the consciousness of all the community’s dead and unborn reside. It is heritage and hope. It the well from which both tradition and innovation spring. It is a sphere made up of many circular time-lines. It looks forwards and backwards in the same direction. Zamani encompasses Sasa like a womb, cradles, supports and nourishes it.  The future is the past returning, but we make it our own. Sasa is the flesh; Zamani, the bones.

Strip us bare: we are bones. The skeleton is us, seen through the mirror of time.

As we come around again to this time of year when the bones of the trees are laid bare, take a moment to connect with Zamani. Honor those who helped create the reality you dwell in. Let yourself love your departed ones. You cannot see them, but they are there, deep within, supporting you. Share their stories. Hold their wisdom. Forgive your dead.

Do not be afraid. Remember your bones.

A Night at the Temple

Concerts. Kirtan. Vodou ceremonies. I don’t care, as long as there’s music.

My body is caught in the current that flows over and from 18,000 people screaming along to Tool. I had a bad day, but that’s gone now. When the music starts, the music is everything. It both brings me completely into, and totally out of, myself.

50,000 people fall silent at the opening chords to The Smashing Pumpkins “Disarm.” We are sitting on a hill on Harriet Island, back when Lollapalooza was a tour. 10,000 people chant ancient hymns on the huge ghat steps leading down to the river in Varanasi. The whole city is lit by oil lamps on this sacred night. The State Theater is packed for the Black Crowes. We have balcony seats. I will talk about this night for the rest of my life, but right now, my whole world is Chris Robinson, on stage, wailing and dancing barefoot on a Persian rug. Over the course of two hours, 1400 people at the (old) Guthrie slowly lean forward more and more and more until we are all perched on the edge of our seats, breathless, as Ali Akbar Khan first caresses, then strums then totally fucking shreds on the sarod. All these experiences were distinct, but they are all the same.

Music usually raises a fierce joy, but there have been grueling times I endure only because music protects me, insulates me, wraps around me, and keeps the world out. Sometime the only thing that keeps me from being alone is a song that express what I am unable to articulate. Music lets me know that I am not the only one to feel something; it both helps me feel it more keenly and to overcome it: with music, the only way out is through. Sometimes I think that in buffering me from the reality around me, the music somehow absorbed it. So when I hear that song again, a little of that reality leaks out.

Music has always been something that frees me. At First Avenue, 200 people dance to P-Funk. George Clinton swings his multi-colored hair in a circle and yells “Are we LIVIN?” We roar back an affirmative: yes, we are livin. 100 people on a River boat chugging along the Mississippi jump up and down in unison to Michael Franti telling us to “throw your hands up high, ‘cause you never know how long you’re gonna live till you die.” The boat is shaking. 40 people crammed in an unfinished room at The New Orleans Healing Center groove to the Afro-Jazz rhythm of Kora Konnection from Senegal. There is no room to dance. A dozen people dressed in white do have room to dance around the center pole of a Vodou temple, as the drums call the Spirits. I am barefoot on the sand, under the stars, listening to music played by gypsies. We are deep in the desert of India, and I dance with my oldest friend.

Live music is best, but my everyday life has had a variable soundtrack coming from the radio, records, tapes, CDs and now our ever expanding digital collection. I love discovering new music, but I treasure the old stuff too. It can take me back to moments, places, people I have not seen in twenty years. The beat kicks in and suddenly I am there again, the memory stored in the music.

My husband and I, and most of our friends, slamdance to Ministry’s “Jesus Built My Hotrod” in the ballroom at a Marriot: he is wearing a tux, I am in my ivory silk wedding gown. We are grinning, young, drunk. I plug my headphones in and listen to Guns and Roses. Axl Rose is the only other human being who might be as pissed off as I am right now. I am in a car with my three best friends when  Prince comes on the radio. We crank it up, pull over on the freeway, and dance. We laugh like loons, and hug each other. My mom puts on a Peter Tosh record and we move to the sound of the Caribbean. Outside, the Minneapolis streets fill with snow. I must have been about six years old.

This is the story of my life. Then, now, always.

Bands I have seen live (as well as I can remember): 
Pixies, Beck, John Mooney, Smashing Pumpkins, Twilight Singers, Tori Amos, Ministry, Dead Can Dance, Flock of Seagulls, PJ Harvey, Bela Fleck, Ani DiFranco, Stanton Moore, Beastie Boys,  Sade, Black Crowes, Blink 182, Fall Out Boy, Sean Johnson and Wild Lotus, Panic! At The Disco, Gypsy Kings, The Decemberists, INXS, Beck, Billy Idol,The Killers, Liz Phair, Gypsy Kings, Modest Mouse, NIN, Roxy Music, Rage Against the Machine, They Might Be Giants, The Black Keys, Tool, Jewel, Ravi Shankar, Trombone Shorty, Jimmy Eat World, Aerosmith, Trip Shakespeare, Lenny Kravitz, Burning Spear, Alice in Chains, Ziggy Marley, The Breeders, Ali Akbar Khan, Babes in Toyland, Tracy Chapman, Michael Franti.

I would see every single one of those bands again, with the exception of Lenny Kravitz, who was so surly and wooden that he has the distinction of being the one artist who managed to make me dislike his music, which I previously liked, after seeing him live. Maybe he was having a bad day. But come on, man, you’re opening for Aerosmith. Have some humility.

Bands I hope to see:
MIA, Primus, Santigold, Lady Gaga, White Stripes, Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Rolling Stones, Snow Patrol, U2, Gaslight Anthem, Arcade Fire, My Morning Jacket, Muse, Gutter Twins, Wolfmother, Rob Zombie, Vampire Weekend, The Strokes, Ozzy, Sleigh Bells, Prince, ZZ Top, Marilyn Manson, B.B. King,  Pink, Godsmack, The Cure, Atmosphere, Black Eyed Peas, Arctic Monkeys.

Bands I wish I could have seen:
Ramones, Queen, Johnny Cash, Joy Division, GNR, Led Zep, Patsy Kline, The Clash, The Beatles, Nirvana, Bob Marley, The Doors, Peter Tosh, The Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix. The thought that I will never see Jimi Hendrix live in concert sometimes depresses me.

I almost didn’t go to the last show we had tickets for (Modest Mouse at the Orpheum) because I felt crappy. I have endometriosis, which results in chronic pain. I’m not in pain all the time, but when I am, I’d rather be curled up on the couch at home. But I wanted to go, so, fuck it, I went. There was a great crowd, everyone on their feet, screaming, cheering, singing along to the music. I look around at the wonderful cross-section of goateed, pierced, vintage-clothes-wearing Minnesota geekdom, and think: these are my people! At first I just stand there, sort of bouncing, listening to the show. But music comes in my ears and out my hips, so pretty soon I am swaying and grooving. Tentatively. Pelvic pain and pelvic motion do not go together. But after awhile, the music just…takes me, and I stop caring. I dance. I stop feeling anything besides the music. I stop being anything besides the music.

When the music gets going the beat comes up through the floor and pounds through the air, pulsing my sternum like another heartbeat. Everyone is moving, jumping up and down or swaying in place. I feel the life coursing through me, those around me, the universe. There is no difference. How can there be? We share a heart.

Immersion ~Belize part 2

I always have some fear when I swim out the first time, after an absence from the Sea. I love the Ocean, but depths frighten me.

It is especially unnerving because right now I can’t see anything; this is not the clear brochure blue Caribbean but a slightly marshy seaside with a muddy floor. The waves stir everything up and visibility is about what I expect in a blizzard, except with coral heads and parrotfish suddenly materializing in front of me. We have vague directions to the little reef (“About 200 yards North off the dock of the house with the barking dogs”). We periodically stop, pop our heads out of the water and pull our facemasks up to squint at the shore. The waves have a different idea of which way we should be heading, and disagreeing with them is tiring. The water is choppy and not really that warm. I tread water and try to untangle strands of my hair from the clasp that holds snorkel to mask; I hear them rip. I yank the mask down, lower my head, and swim. The snorkel sometimes offers air, other times, salt water. My breath sounds amplified, loud and fast: Darth Vader having a panic attack. I feel both claustrophobic and exposed. I try to relax and slow my breathing, which only makes me realize how not-relaxed I am.

I feel simultaneously afraid, foolish for being afraid, and afraid of showing my fear. Are fish like tigers? Can they smell fear? I feel like turning around and swimming back for shore, back to where I can see what’s coming at me.

I’m tired. I float for a minute, facedown, bobbing. My limbs relax.  My back is warm then cool, warm then cool, as small waves come between flesh and sun. Out of the gloom a 5 ft Eagle Ray soars by in slow motion. My head turns to follow its glide. The waters swirl, then I am alone again.

I stop breathing for a moment. Silence rushes in my ears. This is what being a priestess is like.

I have spent so much time gazing at the surface of the Waters. It is mirrored. It’s all the same Ocean, but there is a lot of publicity about the clear places where you can see below. I never seem to end up there. I always end up in the obscure, muddy parts, where the light bounces off the surface. There’s only one way to know what’s there. I wade until the ground drops out from under me and I’m forced to swim. Any given directions are vague, meaningless once I’m on on my way.

I paddle through a vast and murky Sea, not sure where I’m going, not sure what I’ve come to see, not sure I really want to be out here at all. 

Immersion is a constant caress, both distant and intimate. Invisible currents carry me along; I fight against them, wanting to go my own way. I am beneath the surface, but barely. There are unimagined depths below. I do not understand the nature or intentions of the deep, or what may dwell there. The speculation chills me. I long to see, but fear the encounter. Things seem to appear out of nowhere and I am startled by their grace, their belonging to this place. I flounder around, awkward and scared; my tension only makes it worse. Insight is only a byproduct of exhaustion. Be still and listen. Nothing can give me the release I am seeking; I have only been struggling against myself. I am more water than flesh: I am made of the substance I am immersed in. I have been gliding farther into myself, into my own Waters. I am the deep.

My breaths are the waves beneath the waves. Movement is effortless. The depths I fear are what bear me up.