CHINA

In the summer of 1998 I received from the Durfee Foundations, an ‘Adventures in China Capital Grant’ to go to the most remote part of the Xinjiang province in search of throat (hoomei) singers. I went to the Altai Mountains specifically because this area borders Kazahkstan and Mongolia and it was supposedly a place of shamanistic practices and ritual singing.   It was my intention to not only seek out what perhaps would have been the last of these type of singers to survive the Cultural Revolution but to then take some introductory lessons with one of them.  The grant never hinged on the success of this adventure, it was provided as a way to experience the process.  Below is a follow up paper I wrote on my experience and a video I put together of the music I heard and was a part of along the way.

The Hills Are Alive

Click here to view the embedded video.

Also, on that same trip, on the way back from Xinjiang province to Beijing, I decided to go to Xiahe, a Tibetan town in the Amdo region.  It was there that I met some incredible people, one of whom I created a blog about – Jigme Trinley Ozer Rinpoche, who perhaps planted the seeds that would change my life forever.

When I was just about done with my year living in Paris in 1995, I decided to take a summer trip to visit my relatives in Israel, and also visit the Negev.  One early morning, I walked to the edge of the famous Ramon crater there and it was in those introspective steps there that I knew that on my 40th birthday I would take myself to India.   So for my first trip to India, in 2002, I created an extensive journal of my 4 months there and this is an excerpt from an experience I had at the OSHO International Center in Pune, India.  I was actually living for two months on the other side of town, attending daily classes at the Ramamani Iyengar Memorial Yoga Institute but I had heard that the OSHO center had a great pool and good safe organic food.  But in order to go visit there, you have to go through an extensive orientation process and here’s the story:

Tea in the Samovar

I came back to the States in the winter of 2003 with walking pneumonia, on the mend.  And within a week of my arrival back home, my aunt died. Within a few months, George Bush had declared war on Iraq and thousands went into the streets to protest.   What I wrote below corresponds to my sentiments at the time and still resonates deeply.

Twilight in America