You should have been there.  When the artists of Ferus Gallery in their metaphorical pick up trucks ran down the art establishment.  When hippies argued about Nietzsche on the bus benches of Sunset.  When Laurel Canyon rang with the sounds of many bands about to be famous, as naked hippie girls from the valley and the beaches strolled in smiling, offering on silver trays joints, coke, ludes and herbal tea.  When the Santa Monica Freeway was new you could take your hot rod on it and let her rip.  The cops would sit back and enjoy the show, then pull you over just to admire what you had under the hood.

You should have been there when the Crue rocked the Santa Monica Civic while the whole record industry in love with new wave and disco frowned and folded their arms too smug to realize metal was about to take over the world.  You should have been there when Beck soloed on a leaf blower at Spaceland.  You certainly should have been there when Nirvana played the Jabberjaw and Dave asked for anyone to please pass a joint.  You should have been there when King T rapped “Played Like a Piano” in a studio across a river of alcohol and a cloud of chronic.  You should have been there when the Black Panthers supported the riot grrrl and peace punk show at Koo’s Cafe in Santa Ana.

And that’s just a fraction of the musical you should have been theres of Los Angeles.  I was born here so I’ve been hearing these stories all my life.  The great lost shops of Los Angeles is a worthy collection of stories.  For example, Patty’s African Shop was just down the block from the Bodhi Tree book store.  A classic stucco vaguely Spanish West Hollywood house with a porch converted into the most extraordinary almost museum of all things African.  Every room was crammed with carvings, masks, and sculptures, some of them towering over the infrequent shoppers.

Pictures of Patty in Africa with all her friends were on the walls and pinned to the counters.  Huge hornbill carvings in that luscious dark African wood, guardian birds, they dominated the entrance.  Something as amazing as a Bakuba kingmaker mask could easily be missed among all the treasures.  Bins of beautiful ancient and current beads brought to mind the outdoor markets of Africa.  Patty herself, a gray stump, not very nice to customers, knew exactly where everything came from and what it meant and what it was used for.  The hardcore parolees who watched the store for her would recommend the right charm for your trouble if you were respectful.

You should have been there when The Sorcerer’s Shop with its dark, dank, muffled pagan atmosphere of nature religion at its finest offered exquisite mixed oils like the Irresistible Drops made famous by Darryl Hannah.  Shop owner Babetta was so glamorous she gave the place a Playboy After Dark vibe.  Her mustached warlock partner looked like he had just stepped out of the Dunwich Horror.  Did you visit when the owl Solomon was still alive, or after he was stuffed, or when his stuffing started to molt?

Babetta in the Sorceror’s Shop

Then there was Uba’s House of Fashion where the transvestites, dominatrixes, and other fetishists who found The Pleasure Chest too vanilla could go to get the accoutrements of their trades.  A good place to get custom leather.  Blackie Lawless wasn’t the only future rock star who went to Uba for that fashion advice that made the New York Dolls seem modest.  No matter how peculiar your fetish once you visited Uba’s you knew you were not alone.  You should have been there, someone will say, and tell you a wonderful, disturbing, improbable story.

I’ve had a few you should have been there moments myself.  You should have been there when Manly P. Hall lectured on Sunday mornings delivering fascinating facts and eloquent advice in an improvisation of detailed wit and wisdom as beautifully composed as the best jazz.  You should have been there when Vince bitched about the fans’ lack of enthusiasm during the filming of the video for “Kickstart My Heart” when the audience exhausted from waiting in the sun all day outside the Whiskey chanted bullshit at the Crue until they fled the stage.  The music press, even the so called independents, never touched that story.  You should have been there when Team Dresch played their first gig at a lesbian bar, at Palms in West Hollywood; most of the regulars didn’t like them, much preferring acoustic guitars, but the band was a hurricane of joy for their tiny but thrilled audience of fellow musicians.

You should have been there when Al Green played the House of Blues on the Sunset Strip passing out roses just as 1999 ended.  You should have been there when a protesting Courtney Love was carried off the stage horizontally like a 2×4 by two roadies, allowing Jane’s Addiction to perform a collective healing the Halloween after 9/11. The press didn’t write about that either.  You should have been there when the Invisible Scratch Pickles or DJ Spooky made turntables raise the ancestors at the Masonic Hall on Highland.   I got to play that gig when the Black Panthers arrived to support riot grrrls and peace punks at Koo’s Cafe.  Dreamer, a Panther rapper, bought my band’s cassette demo even though it was lime green and decorated with glitter stickers.

Most of those you should have been theres involve specific people.  As for you should have been there places, the Bodhi Tree book store towers above all the others, even above Tower Records during the hair metal days, not only a place where you could find almost any kind of music you craved, but a fashion and hair display as competitive as any pedigreed dog show.

The white Bodhi Tree flag flapped in the breeze like a Tibetan wind horse or the unfurled banner of the King of Gondor.  How many homes have known the ubiquitous somehow comforting Bodhi Tree bookmarks with the tree logo and slogan: Books to Illuminate the Heart and Mind?

You should have been there when the Bodhi Tree was a just a couple of rooms, with a bunch of hippies working and shopping there.  Only a few pictures of gurus on the wall then.  You should have been there when the punk rockers began arriving mostly because the Bodhi Tree was the place to find poetry by William Burroughs, and Bukowski, unless you drove way over to the huge hippie haven of Papa Bach’s bookstore across the street from the Nuart Theater, on that side of Sepulveda.

How many Bodhi Tree cats did you know?  Did you know them well enough for them to give you a head bump?  Did you know the cat who liked to curl up next to the shelves of books on witchcraft?  You should have.  One by one their pictures went up on the wall as their bodies were buried under the big fig tree like the one Buddha gazed at for so long.

Lucia, the last reigning cat of the Bodhi Tree

Stan and Phil were a couple of rocket scientists, no really, well, aerospace engineers to be more exact.  They worked on WMDs figuring out how to hurl more destructive destruction with missiles from space.  They weren’t the only young engineers who wanted to do something more positive with their lives at the end of the sixties, but they are among the few who actually did.

Stan and Phil presided over the proceedings with the keenly aware eyes and paternal calm of experienced meditators, not your average bosses.  They started the Bodhi Tree for $18,000, leasing a two bedroom bungalow on Melrose.  Traditional book stores weren’t carrying the kinds of books Stan, Phil and their friends, hell, their entire generation, wanted to read.  They were going to fix that.  The ideal they had in mind was the Library of Alexandria.

The songs on the radio the year the Bodhi Tree opened almost tell its story.  The Beatles broke up.  You can be sure “The Long and Winding Road” was playing on the transistor radio when they were building the shelves and painting the walls in the modest Bodhi Tree 1.0.   “Let it Be” had been on the radio for a few months already, along with Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” Sly and the Family Stone had a hit with “Everybody is a Star,” a song title to bring a smile to the face of any Platonist, Paracelsian, or Thelemite.

The melancholic melodrama that was Love Story, and George C. Scott chewing up the scenery making a mockery of the mincing but nevertheless formidable Patton, were blockbuster movies.  MASH was a hit movie before it became a TV show.  The merchandising trends triggered by Woodstock showed future protectors of the status quo how to not only co-opt but also how to profit from the counterculture.

On July 10 1970 the Bodhi Tree opened.  Astrologers will note the Sun conjunct Mercury conjunct Mars in Cancer square Jupiter in Libra, the chart of a home away from home so successful it avoids all whiff of scandal or any serious accident, as if blessed.  The major challenges almost always having to do with too much success not too little.

Bodhi Tree’s first Christmas, George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord” was number one.  But Janis Joplin had just died that October.  Jimi Hendrix had died only a few weeks before.  Brian Jones had died the summer before.  Jim Morrison would die the following summer.

Soon the clean mellow sound of California folk pop, the introspection of James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, and Carole King, would rule the airwaves.  People were turning inward in search of better answers to suddenly pressing questions about the meaning of life, the laws of good health, and the history of human spirituality.  By 1976 the Bodhi Tree’s business had doubled then redoubled and so on so rapidly that they bought the building.

You should have been there in 1978 when the small bookcase of used books was replaced by a stucco cottage next door that became the used book branch.  It had a few shelves on the porch outside the old wooden door offering free books at all hours. You should have breathed in the aromatic delights of its herb room, where shelves full of big glass jars with a silver scoop in each offered special teas, the house yogi blend was particularly good, rare and common simple herbs, very popular catnip, of course, and even, back when it was legal, the healing wonder of comfrey, both root and leaf.  Walking around the corner you would pass the discounted dinged merchandise table and cash register on your left, and the tall double shelves of collectible books on your right, as you approached the bench where heaping boxes of books were sold as soon as they could be priced.  And the used cookbooks were often filled with cut out recipes, brown newspaper articles, and sometimes useful notes.

You should have been there when the manager of the used branch visited Tibet returning glowing and full of stories; almost everyone working there seemed to have pilgrimaged to India at least once.  If they liked you they’d call you when they knew they were getting a box of treasures which they would sell you at impressively fair prices.  Books that might cost you five hundred dollars each today, when everyone checks online to establish their inflated prices, were easily affordable, and available for layaway.  Great book collections came from that store.

The used branch had a spiritual mission to get the right books in the right hands.  Once they got used to your taste they would make good suggestions to further your explorations.  You could be sure that anyone who worked there would at some point involve you in a fascinating conversation about anything from the way thunderstorms clear the ether to the latest herbal remedy from the far east.  Sometimes they told you their own stories, how they arrived a mess and in the comfort of the refuge provided by Stan and Phil they blossomed into authors, artists and teachers.

In 1983 Shirley MacLaine took the New Age underground mainstream when she published the autobiographical Out on a Limb where she wrote that a book destined to change her life mysteriously dropped into her hands at the Bodhi Tree.  In1987 Out on a Limb was adapted for television making an even bigger splash.  The Bodhi Tree was world famous.  Larry Geller went there to buy books for Elvis.  Once and future governor Jerry Brown spent weekend hours intently reading.  Donovan played a song when he dropped by.  Timothy Leary popped in one October day to gleefully sign Happy Halloween in all the copies of his books.

The Bodhi Tree new branch became a cornucopia of imported and domestic handcrafted art, wonderful gift cards, crystals, jewelry, candles, chimes, dream catchers, statues, oils, incenses, a great glass case of every possible deck of tarot cards.  Obscure magazines on spiritual topics from all over the world filled many long shelves.  Small independent publishers were assured the attention they deserved, not only by the staff, but also on the new arrivals table that everyone loved to circle upon first entering.

The Bodhi Tree didn’t judge you.  You could find Christian books on angels and The Satanic Bible, the latest translation of the Flower Ornament Sutra, or the most obscure Sufi poetry.  Sure, sometimes you had to dodge surly sikhs, fallen Catholics, and wannabe cult leaders.  Girls had to beware of creeps who hit on them by reading their palms or or the inevitable guess your sign game.  But that was part of the fun.

The carefully chosen wisdom and spiritual books and art were so abundant you felt you were entering a temple of every spirituality that was ever written about, with that characteristic dense atmosphere of serenity and concentrated inspiration one expects from sacred places.  The music they had playing complemented the mood of discovery, and showcased new artists, often first listens of musicians who became famous like synth pioneer Kitaro or pianist composer George Winston.

At the height of its success Bodhi Tree had a hundred employees.  They were making close to 2000 transactions a day with a cash flow of about five million a year.  In 1994 they bought the storefront next door and put it to use as a meeting room, a lecture hall, and a center for book signings.

But nothing lasts forever.  As Borders and Barnes and Nobles started carrying larger inventories of spiritual books, Stan and Phil could see the Bodhi Tree’s days were numbered.  But what drastically reduced the Bodhi Tree’s business was West Hollywood’s short sighted decision to bow to resident pressure and install permit only parking.  A bad economy that makes book buying a luxury, and the new digital format instantly downloadable for pennies on the dollar didn’t help.  Besides, these days one out of every two spiritual books bought in the U.S. is sold by Amazon.

Pulling up to have your car parked for you by a free if you spend fifty dollars valet was a far cry from just finding a spot on the street, or being lucky to get one of those four spots between the branches, especially the one under the carport, one of the most coveted parking spots in Los Angeles on a hot summer day.  I always felt the store liked me because of how often I scored that spot.

What was a lower middle class neighborhood of butcher shops and gas stations around the corner from the lumberyard is now home to boutiques offering five hundred dollar handbags and ten thousand dollar bathtubs.  To keep the Bodhi Tree open two extra months Stan and Phil had to fork out forty grand.  The land and buildings that cost them $650,000 today are assessed at 2.7 million.

The Bodhi Tree never really established a comprehensive online presence, but that was a conscious decision, since Stan and Phil had installed their first computer and software way back in 1983.  It wouldn’t be surprising if they weren’t quite comfortable with the lack of community that masquerades as community in the virtual world.

As soon as word got out that the store was going to be sold the many regulars, a few for over forty years, returned to walk there one last time.  Conversations could be overheard about the first time people had visited, the significant other they met, the friend who bought a pamphlet about a diet that cured their serious disease, or the life changing book they found.  I overheard one long time visitor describe how his own bookshelves and benches in his living room were almost identical copies of the ones at Bodhi Tree.

The store became slowly depleted as a series of progressively steeper discounts thinned the inventory.  It felt like visiting an old relative you knew was dying, someone you could remember in all their wise and vibrant joy, now gaunt and disinterested.  Stan and Phil themselves used the word transitioning about the end of their store, a term preferred by hospice professionals.  On my last visit I looked at the glorious stained glass sri yantra in the window and wondered if it was for sale;  alas I had no window worthy to hang it in.

But there was much more to the Bodhi Tree than its wonderful stock and staff, including the cats.  Much more than the free tea of exotic varieties, and the old fashioned bathrooms, like bathrooms in a comfortable house not a store, always kept scrupulously clean, with a selection of incense at the ready in a ceramic incense holder.

Bodhi Tree was a place of serendipity.  For many of us it was our first choice for gift buying.  Not only was the selection marvelous, but the store had a strange way of fitting you with the right gift at the right time.  If you were sensitive you didn’t have to ask for help.  As you explored you would be drawn to that perfect gift.  The book someone most needed to read.  The work of art they would cherish all their lives.  The incense that became their signature scent.  The oracle they would rely on.  The candle that would light their way.  The famous esoteric saying: “when the student is ready the teacher will appear” was never more true than at the Bodhi Tree.  And this did not apply only to inanimate objects.

Some teachers you meet only once.  Some teachers you never even learn their name.  I never knew the name of my zen master.  He didn’t wear traditional robes.  He haunted the Buddhist nook of the Bodhi Tree.   He could be found only by serendipity.  I overhead him speaking to another of his students.  At the time I was deeply absorbed with technical aspects of Tibetan Buddhism, specifically drops and the other structures of the subtle bodies.  I had not yet made the connection between the yogic bindu and drops.  When his student left I decided to approach him.  I asked him if he could help me understand these Tibetan mysteries.  He said: if there is no mind there are no drops.

I met him several times.  I tried to make appointments to see him but he refused.  He would be there if I needed him.  Our meetings always consisted of me posing detailed questions and he deflecting them with koans and non sequiturs.  He became short tempered with me, irritation crept into his voice when he asked me why I was so fascinated with the finger I never looked at the moon.  But he could also be gentle and witty in a way that would ring in my consciousness for weeks.

Wrestling his point of view became a constant practice for me. Then it happened. That is, nothing happened.  There it all was, shining now, made up of everything.  Instead of facing the world through the blinders of all my training I was simple and everything around me beamed with the same simple consciousness and I felt a great tragic yet blissful love for all my fellow travelers in this particular moment of time.  I went to see him for a last visit on a beautiful spring day.

He was there in the windowless corner of colorful mostly Buddhist banners and carvings, bent over staring at a book’s full page reproduction of a painting of Daruma by Shunso.  Two masters dubiously eyeing each other, one in brush strokes the other in a plaid shirt.  He hadn’t seen me in awhile.  Had probably given up on me.  I thanked him for helping me realize a spring day.  The serenity and warmth the words conveyed made him smile.  We were no longer teacher and student.  We were more like two children not too awestruck to giggle at the miracle and mystery that is being.  A distraught looking young woman appeared to demand his attention and I left smiling knowing she was in good hands.  Though I returned to the Bodhi Tree often, I never saw him again.

Words are dangerous, slippery, magnetic, filled with prejudices.  A word can be a violent tool in the wrong hands, like a gun or a knife.  Words tell only a fraction of the miracle and mystery.  Words more often confuse and cause conflict.  The emotional charges of words can differ so greatly between cultures and individuals that even when the same definition is held, the real meaning can be quite opposite.  I have a friend who is an African American martial arts master.  He tells me African Americans find it almost impossible to use the word master even when it is a term of respect and honor.  They would not address him as master.

What my zen teacher taught me was to trust a deeper awareness of being.  Away from words we listen more deeply.  Words are the past and the future intruding on the present.  People have struggled to name and describe this awakening.  Bucke called it cosmic consciousness.  Generations of metaphysicians talked about the Higher Self, over-self, or used the sanskrit word atman.  Suchness. Tathata.  Thusness.  zen.  All emphasize that the mystery is far greater than a brain anchored consciousness can conceive, at least as currently under utilized by inhabitants of human bodies.  But what is brain when there is no mind?

Around the time of the U.S. Bicentennial, a neighbor named Carl who lived down the block gave Bodhi Tree its very own bodhi tree (ficus religiosa), a sapling he had grown from a seed, in a simple pot.  It stayed in the pot till it was six feet tall.  During the great remodel of 1983 the bodhi tree of West Hollywood at long last got some ground out back to dig its roots into.  The tree is a forty foot tall fig bearing landmark now.   No one knows whether the new owners will cut it down.

Through riots, earthquakes, wildfires, floods, serial killers, police brutality the Bodhi Tree book store was the calm at the eye of the storm that is Los Angeles, a spiritual oasis in the desert of Hollywood.  For anyone wanting to dismiss this city as a plastic place of shallow people the Bodhi Tree was a reminder that looks can be deceiving.

The latest news is that the Bodhi Tree, phoenix like, will rise again at a new larger location complete with a cafe.  I will visit and give it every chance to win me, but even if it finds its stride and continues the grand tradition, it won’t be the original Bodhi Tree book store because it can’t be.

I’m going to miss visiting the last reigning feline of the Bodhi Tree, plump little Lucia, who at first would wander in occasionally, but then, when her nearby owner died, she took up residence.  We were on a head bump basis.  Lucia lives with Neisha now.  Neisha wasn’t just the all knowing office manager, she’s a witness to 33 years of Bodhi Tree history.  I hope she fancies herself a bit of an historian right now, Stanley and Phillip, too.  Meet the four most recognized of the Bodhi Tree cat pantheon here.

I went to the Bodhi Tree just before it closed in December 2011 to buy one last gift.  I doubted I would find anything.  Only leftovers remained.  I was buying a gift for some one I love deeply who had I been buying gifts for at Bodhi Tree since we were kids.  The store had never failed me.  And it didn’t this last time.  I found a beautiful giclee print of Green Tara on the wall that had been there for the last seven years.  Apparently all the other buyers had thought it was one of the gurus on the wall, which were not for sale.  The Buddha of Enlightened Activity seems to me to be the perfect parting gift from one of my favorite places, my sanctuary, the Bodhi Tree book store, a lost shrine of American Metaphysical Religion.  You should have been there.

Photo by Gendy Alimurung

Feel free to leave your stories about the Bodhi Tree in the comment section below.

Article Written by Ronnie Pontiac

Newtopia staff writer RONNIE PONTIAC is a founding member and primary guitarist of Lucid Nation, executive producer of the documentaries Rap is War, Exile Nation, and the award winning animated short Cohen on the Bridge.  He associate produced The Gits documentary, and was art editor, then poet in residence for Newtopia Magazine in its former incarnation . He’s a published author of works on obscure topics such as ancient Greek religion and the history of alchemy. Follow him on Twitter @AmerMysteries.

Photos by Valerie Pierce

This is the third article in a three part memoir series, which explores my personal experience using altered states as part of my healing process. This segment describes my experience using the meditative therapy process known as the Inner Source. By revealing my own experience, I hope to make the Inner Source more understandable and accessible for any of my readers who are interested in using it in their healing practice. At the end of the article you will find an Appendix, which contains the writing of several of my clients about their experience using the Inner Source in their therapy.

Each person has an inner life. We may or may not be in touch with the life inside us, but it exists nonetheless. In order to heal and transform ourselves, we need to gain access to this inner life. That life is located, in part, in the subconscious and unconscious parts of our mind. Many of us are mostly out of touch with these aspects of ourselves. Fortunately, we all have a built in “application” that can guide us into the nooks and crannies of our deeper selves. This application goes by many different names. I call it the Inner Source. Here’s how I discovered this valuable resource.

In the early seventies I served as the group psychotherapy consultant for a suburban Mental Health Agency. One afternoon one of the therapists in the group asked me if I would read a book about a meditative healing method that he was interested in. He told me that he was very excited about this way of working in therapy, and that if I were up for using the process, he would like to be my client. That was my introduction to “The Inner Source” by Michael Emmons. Not only did I read the book and begin working with the method with my new client, I began using it myself in my therapy with Jane Gerber, one of the founders of the Gestalt Institute in Chicago. Both my new client and I took to this new way of working with a great deal of enthusiasm. We were excited because we both began to discover that there truly is an internal source of guidance inside each of us. We found in opening ourselves and being receptive to this process, it activated powerful experiences of insight and healing.

In my work with Jane, I discovered that by tracking my internal sensory experience and telling her out loud what I was feeling, seeing, and hearing inside myself, I would begin to feel guided in one of two directions; either I would travel back into my personal history to experiences that were painful or meaningful, or I would drift off into rather blissful states where I would see beautiful colors and hear music that I could listen to or tone along with. Over the course of working in this way, I experienced an intensive healing process that finally reconciled me to the loss of my Mother and my Aunt. Using the Inner Source, I was able to complete the grief work that I had begun with Dr. Joseph Zinker. (See Part I of Altered Journeys).

Since that time, I have used the Inner Source on many occasions; when I notice that I feel out of synch, when I lose touch with my feelings or intuition, and when I have a problem that I have trouble resolving. In 2001 I was going through a rough time with my girlfriend, and I noticed that my anger with her was intensifying. It felt out of proportion to the situation, but I was not being successful in reining it in. Using the Inner Source by myself did not seem to help me, and so I decided to ask a therapist that I had heard many good things about if she would work with me. I asked if we might use the Inner Source, in conjunction with the ways in which she usually worked with her clients. She agreed. I feel especially fortunate that I decided to work with Lani Granum, one of the most compassionate, supportive and tuned in human beings I have ever known. Our working together saved my emotional life. Lani and I collaborated for over two years, and during that time I had a variety of important healing experiences. Many of them were inspired by our work with the Inner Source.

The particular session that I will use here as an example of how the Inner Source works, took place a little more than a year into my work. During the early part of my therapy with Lani, I had discovered the source of my escalated feelings of anger. I expected that the past link to my  anger would be connected to my stepmother, whom I had developed intense hatred for over the time that I lived with her and my father. Although some of my anger was linked to feelings about her, I was surprised to find the most important associations were to my father’s perfectionism. Like my girlfriend, my father was very particular and exacting, and would become quite angry if I failed to do things the way he wanted me to. He was short on praise and long on angry criticism. By the time I was a teenager, I avoided being around him as much as possible. Since I had committed myself to my girlfriend, getting away from her was not an option. I wanted to work things out. Working with Lani and making this connection to my unconscious anger at my Father caused my anger to de-escalate. Unfortunately, my returning to emotional equanimity did not help my relationship that much, so I continued my therapy.

In the first week of November, 2001 I had a session with Lani in which we decided to use the Inner Source to explore where my work needed to go. The method begins by relaxing your body. This can be accomplished by getting in touch with your breathing and taking several long slow breaths, emphasizing breathing out to the end of the exhalation. You can then use the eye-roll technique of rolling your eyes up into your head, as if you could look out through the crown chakra. You can hold that position for a few seconds and then let both your eyes and your body relax. The breathing technique lets your mind know you are interested in altering your conscious waking state. The eye-roll technique activates the alpha brain wave, which is the precursor of trance and meditation.

Once I was in this relaxed state, I set an intention to explore where I needed to go next to improve my relationship. I began to track my sensory experience, visual, auditory, and feeling sensations. I also used my awareness to track any free associative thoughts or impulses I experienced. I began reporting this information out loud to Lani, who would sometimes repeat what I was saying and occasionally make a comment or a suggestion to focus my attention on something that I wasn’t reporting. The beginning of this experience for me is often a gradual process of becoming more and more open and receptive to whatever comes to me. Keeping my attention focused in this way induces a meditative state that gives me access to the creative unconscious mind and to my inner life. Once I reach my inner sense of self, the journey begins.

Before too long, probably ten to fifteen minutes, I was seeing visual imagery. I started to feel as if I were looking out of a window on a bus or a train. I became aware that I was a passenger on an old Chicago Trolley that ran on tracks through the city and was connected to an overhead electric wire that provided the power. I had ridden in these vehicles a few times when I was quite young. The front of the trolley had a large curved window and in my meditative experience I was looking out through this front window. And then the trolley began to lift off of the tracks and we were up in the air, cruising above the city.

At this point, I am going to quote from the journal account I wrote immediately after the session. In it you will likely notice that the altered state is still unfolding, since my journal entry is somewhat trance like and comes out as a prose poem:

Stretched out on my therapist’s floor, the vision arrives.  Inside an old Chicago trolley, flying lazily along, drifting through haze and clouds, I gaze out through the rounded front window at the open sky, catching peripheral glimpses of my Father in his business gabardines.

My white-haired Nana, is there, seated as always, next to the window, gazing longingly, expectantly, into space. And then I sense that we are all there, my little familial band.

I feel this scene as past, present and afterlife all at once. Once upon a time we were together- connected, involved participants in our common life and drama. And some years from now, we may be so again.

At this moment, I sense that I am this ancient trolley, and that all these blessed ones: my glamorous Aunt with her beautiful voice; my darling four year old sister, holding my hand and skipping down the aisle; my worried Mother, fearfully caring for everyone; my stubbornly optimistic Father, eyes fastened on a better tomorrow- all abide within me- are part and parcel, fiber and bone.

Once again, I sense the familiar landscape of Violet and Daisy’s untimely departures, in what seems like one extended moment. But on this occasion, I get a feeling for the percussive impact. That in the aftermath of this terrible loss, I enshrined the feeling of being all alone in a vast and uncertain world. And I continued to worship at this shrine until this momentary flash of insight began to break my chains of disconnection. I began to feel the opening of my physical body, a welling and surging of tingling sensation that sparked the belief that neither my body nor my being will ever be the same.

A week later after a follow up Inner Source session, I made the following journal entry: So my tale is of the “heroic”, homeless orphan, who, shipwrecked by the death of the ones he loved most, courageously sailed on in a boat of his own making. His family ties, stretched thin and frayed, let go completely, almost all at once.

This act of disconnection, in fact, took both seconds and years to happen, leaving me alone and longing for home and family, while actively seeking to have neither.

I love when everything starts to make new sense, to reconfigure into more of the whole truth! In a moments realization I knew that my disconnection was complete: from home, from family, from my history. Filled with longing and desire, I became an anxious seeker for what I believed I could not have.

Beneath this diligent and grasping longing lurked a big fear- that Family and Home would be the spawning ground of future loss. Meanwhile on and on I fought, blindly and foolishly laying waste to the possible. Now, experiencing this new opening, am I ready to connect, to commit, to locate myself in a real life of beloved family and friends? Or will I choose to be forever the vagabond, my knapsack “home” safely on my back?

In these two Inner Source sessions, my ongoing readiness for disconnection and disaster was revealed to me. In fact, my lack of awareness and understanding of just how disconnected I had become was presented to me very directly. I could actually feel how separate I felt in the years following my losses. Once I allowed myself to feel that separation fully, my body started to open to reconnection. This was the final piece of my relationship puzzle. Part of me had not been fully present, in spite of my commitment to making things work. In fact, I was unknowingly holding back, fearfully expectant of the end of the relationship.

These personal experiences and my experience of the benefits to my clients of this kind of deep meditative exploration are the reason for my writing about these altered state therapeutic methods. I believe that they hold more potential for healing than talk therapy by itself. The talking part of the therapeutic process is invaluable for a number of reasons, not only because the stage for deeper work needs to be set through shared insight into one’s family history and present day life problems and conflicts. Even more importantly, a therapeutic bond needs to be created between the therapist and client that will provide the security and grounding that makes deep work possible. I believe this bond can only grow in the context of the therapist and client getting to know each other well, and requires that they develop trust and feeling for one another. The bond needs to be a compassionate, loving one that creates the security and safety that is often lacking in the client’s life.

So here again, I am underscoring that the Inner Source, Hypnosis, and other kinds of meditative altered state work are best done in the context of a strong therapeutic relationship or a strong and supportive friendship. The subject, i.e. the person who is going to go into the meditative state, needs to feel safe and secure internally, and safe and secure also in relation to the person who is going to witness and help facilitate the experience. Those among my readers who are veterans of regular meditation and/or successful psychotherapy will be able to use these tools on their own, but even trance savvy folks will find having a witness to the process very beneficial. Without the compassion, understanding, and gentle loving presence of my therapist and consultant Lani Granum, I can’t imagine that my healing work would have gone to such a profound level. To feel loved, accepted, and appreciated in my wounded and vulnerable state provided internal healing that is almost impossible to put into words.

I hope that these examples of Inner Source sessions and their results in my life will be helpful to those of you who are interested in making use of these tools of transformation. If you are in a therapeutic relationship, and want to see if these methods would be helpful to you, talk to your therapist about what you are learning and suggest that he/she take a look at my articles. Dr. Michael Emmons latest book on the subject, “Meditative Therapy” includes great detail about the Inner Source. His first book on the subject under the title, “The Inner Source” is available from the Amazon used book sellers, since it is out of print. Both books will be very useful to anyone who would like more information than I have been able to provide.

Appendix

I conclude this article with the personal statements of a few of my clients who have successfully used the Inner Source method in their healing work, and of one client who did not find the Inner Source to be as helpful as hypnosis and Gestalt methods: I hope that reading these accounts will inspire you to explore the Inner Source on your path to healing and transformation. I offer my deep appreciation to my clients and former clients for these cogent revelations of their experience working with the Inner Source.

“While I was working with Tom to heal some deep childhood wounds and the behavioral patterns running through my life that were directly related to those wounds, I found that I had a lot to discover about myself. Part of my frustration was that I had grown disconnected from my internal spirituality and grounding. Often I would find that I was perpetuating harmful  patterns without knowing why or how. We began to work on tapping into my inner source to find the clues, answers, and healing for all of my frustrations and questions. We would work in a similar fashion each time. He would instruct me to lie down, get comfortable and close my eyes. Then he would take me through visualizations to try to find a connection to my inner source. It was easy for me to get comfortable, to close my eyes, and to get into a meditative space but at first I had a problem with finding answers. My ego was used to being defensive, blocking my way into this light space. So Tom gave me a literal thing to imagine,  a little coal miner man, walking up my body and into my mouth and going down my throat and into my inner self with a light on his hat. Once I would do this, I would find myself following this man deep inside myself and then Tom would ask pointed questions like “What is he showing you?”  I would look and see things and let Tom know. He would continue to lead me on this journey until I saw all I needed to see, asked the man any questions I had, and came back with glimpses of things for us to piece  together again in real time outside of the meditative state. This worked so well for me that I began to cherish going into that space. I didn’t know why it worked but I knew that it did work. It continued to shine a light upon and dig out so many keys and clues to my wounds and my healing that I wasn’t able to find in “broad daylight.” It was as if these gems were specifically spit out of the subconscious, or found just sitting there as clear as day. I started to heal and to treasure this place as one I could return to again and again, as an aid in maintaining my mental health and emotional life. As I moved through to finishing my therapy, it became my daily meditation. I am thrilled to have found access to this place where I can  intuitively learn and gather important things I need to know every day.

This process really helps me keep my side of the street clean. When I meditate and go into the inner source today, anything that is bothering me or needs to be dealt with will come up. As I see these things, I also meditate upon how best to deal with them. Answers that may not have come to me in the normal course of my life, where thoughts are constantly streaming through my brain, arrive like welcome guests in the peaceful space my inner source and I have created. It’s both a rich and practical resource, and a daily vitamin for me now.”

**********

“When I first began therapy with Tom, I was looking for ways to connect with
my inner self, which seemed to be an almost total mystery to me.  In
addition to hypnosis I tried Inner Source work.  The first time was almost a total wash out because I found very little that was available to me.  As therapy has progressed, we have tried this technique again several times.  It has gradually worked a little better each time, as I am now able to describe visual, auditory, and physical phenomena that I become aware of. However, it does not appear to work as well for me as hypnosis and gestalt techniques do.  I believe that it would work better with someone who is more in touch with their internal life than I am at this time.”

*********

“On contacting my Inner Source:

Chaos inside. Feeling detached from myself. Trouble making decisions. Chronic anxiety. Then, a bridge is built inside with the therapist’s help. Focusing on breath, body, sights, sounds, and spontaneous thoughts. Focusing on the NOW, the NOW, the NOW. I state my intention – to connect to my Inner Source and seek her wisdom, guidance and healing. ‘Tell me what I need to know. Show me what I need to see.’ And, of course, ‘Heal me NOW’. I am rarely able to do this on my own. But, with the help of my therapist, I often go deeply within my Self. Once there, I connect to inner guidance and wisdom. Lately, the message is that I need to rest, relax, restore myself, not push too hard. Inner Source tells me I am not ready yet to face the sorrow and sadness that rumbles just beneath the surface. Patience? Who me? In spite of the sarcasm, after many affirming experiences with the Inner Source, I feel reassured that there is inner guidance available to me and that She can be trusted. Sometimes access is hard, sometimes easy. It’s always worth it.”

*********

“I have been the type of person who thinks incessantly and analyzes problems over and over, and every which way, without ever settling on the strategies that will cause a significant impact on my emotional health or behavior. Doing inner source work is very different for me.  This method requires me to stop thinking. Instead, I ask questions of my heart, soul, and inner self and just listen.  I start by paying attention to my body and physical signals. Then I can begin to hear messages from inside myself, whispering what I need to hear.

I have recently used this method as a guide for emotional healing in my therapy. In my first experience of this work, I uncovered clues to a repressed memory from my childhood. Specifically, during a guided meditation and visualization exercise, my inner source told me there was an issue significantly holding me back, and then it told me the name of the person connected to it.  Using the inner source method, I have recovered the memory. I have been unraveling the emotional damage of this traumatic incident, and I have been guiding myself toward healing.

In addition to using the inner source method in therapy, I am beginning to use it as a guide in everyday life.  When dealing with a challenge personally or professionally, I employ this method by: stopping, breathing, closing my eyes, and getting in touch with any physical sensations in my body, focusing inwardly. Then I ask what thoughts and feelings are inside, and listen for the answers.  Again, it is different than thinking. It is listening for words and feeling sensations that arise inside me.  I believe that with continued practice, listening to my inner self will be a healthy way to relieve stress and solve problems, but even more, to tune in to where my soul is guiding me.”

*********

“With Inner Source work, Tom and I stopped addressing my issues mentally and turned our attention to my body’s sensations, feelings, and spontaneous input as tools to tap into my inner wisdom, guidance and knowing: my Inner Source.  In my opinion, this work is effective in part due to the fact that I am able turn off my mind and therefore my self-judgments and criticism.  The body holds endless wisdom and truth, and by following its lead, I feel a real sense of efficiency and ease in getting to the heart of and releasing blocks, fears and unconscious limiting beliefs.

In my experience, this is the general process used in Inner Source work. I begin by setting a general intention. I then get into a quiet, meditative, relaxed state. In this state I can feel my body clearly to find what area is drawing my attention and then go there with my focus.  From there I sometimes see shapes or colors or abstract forms that give form to that bodily sensation.  The clarification of those images helps reveal the emotion or association that is contained within.  Often random memories, words or thoughts come to mind and these are invited.  Eventually I feel led to some meaningful area of my life which was previously unclear or uncertain.  Without getting intellectual or analytical, something deep and true is revealed.  I know that the work has been effective by the feeling of relief I feel inside, a shift within that feels like a softening and a relaxing.   Some of the insights that I gained from this work were uncovering unconscious beliefs around male and female roles in relationships as well as revealing pieces of some repressed abusive memories.”

*********

 “A few months after I had started a daily meditative practice, Tom introduced Inner Source work to me.  I did not know what to expect, but I was really interested in uncovering more of the shadows that prevented me from meeting the potential I believed was available to me in life, love, success, and general happiness.

It was several years ago, so many of the specifics are hazy.  However, what I have always taken with me are the feelings of calm and surprise that arose in our Inner Source work.

From the onset, going within was very easy for me.  It felt so natural that I wasn’t sure I was doing it right!  The waves of pictures, sounds, smells and emotions washed over me and allowed me to experience them without getting caught in any sort of drama. This work gave me an opportunity to act as the observer in ways I had never accessed before.

I felt lots of release–tension from my mind, body, and spirit–and a feeling of calm that I had not experienced for a long time.”

Article Written by Thomas Goforth

Newtopia staff writer THOMAS GOFORTH is a psychotherapist and pastoral counselor working in Chicago, IL. He was ordained to the Episcopal priesthood in 1967 and served as Chaplain to the Cook County Jail and the Chicago House of Correction while working for St. Leonard’s House, one of the first halfway houses in the country.. He did draft counseling and community organizing during the Viet Nam War, and was one of the founding members of the Lincoln Park Therapy Collective, an all volunteer organization which provided free group therapy for people living on the North Side of Chicago from 1968 until the mid 80′s.He helped organize the first crisis phone line in Chicago, and later helped train the staff counselors for Kool Aide Youth Emergency Services and Metro Help. He was an actor in the Free Theater Company and Rapid Transit Guerrilla Communications, two groundbreaking political theater companies performing in Chicago during the late 60′s and early 70′s. In the 80′s he helped found the Milton H. Erickson Institute of Chicago and became its third president and a member of its teaching faculty. At the invitation of Charles Shaw, he became the acting “Pit Boss” of the New Poetry Collective, the poetry arm of Newtopia Magazine in its first incarnation. Follow him at Twitter @thomas_goforth.

Baboon Mother and Child, Zambia, Africa, November 2010

November 20, 2010: Johannesburg, South Africa

It’s been a long trip. With a 13-hour layover in Heathrow (luckily four of them in an airport hotel bed courtesy of the travel agency), I’ve been traveling for close to 38 hours. The only reason I’m still vertical is because I’m waiting for my bag. I said I’d rather bring it up myself, but the desk clerk insisted it be brought to my room. I was also told no tipping was allowed in the hotel but that I’d be given an opportunity to tip the entire staff in the morning when I checked out.

Nearly half an hour later, I’m settled in and bored, watching a South African talk show where they go back and forth between English and I think Swahili in the same sentence, and everyone I see is black. The host, the guest, the studio crew, and all of the musicians—a classic soul revue led by a heavy-set woman in a tight blue satin gown and silver eyeshadow playing a huge blue Fender bass. She is proudly introduced as the host’s sister, Cyrille.

There’s a knock at my door and I grab a dollar from my bureau, because there’s no way I’m going to take a bag from someone who’s just walked upstairs with it without giving him at least a dollar. So I open the door and prop it open with my left shoulder and simultaneously thank him and hand him a dollar with my left hand and reach with my right hand to take my bag off the cart as quick as I can. Off-balance and hurried, I swing the bag clumsily in the direction of my room but my shoulder slips off the door and it begins to close, pushing me forward so that I smash my bag into the door frame and lurch forward. The old man reaches behind me to push the door off my back and swing it open behind me and I look up to thank him and he’s leaning forward, bending down to bring his face close to mine and he’s smiling up at me with real joy and I’m ashamed that up until now I hadn’t even looked at him, or acknowledged him personally.

Male Baboon Chases Off a Rival, Zambia

November 21, 2010: Johannesburg, South Africa

Before Breakfast

In the hotel courtyard, silver-black sardines flash
out of the darkness beneath the stones in which
they sleep, to poke the white and shifty moon.

November 22, 2010: Baobob Camp, Chobe, Botswana

Among the San

The paintings in the caves have almost disappeared
on which the map was written
before anyone thought to write the story down—

and the locals no longer remember
what their grandfathers said about the paintings,
and the caves are thick with dust.

Around them and far into the distance
the landscape is almost blank
with the emptiness of evening.

Infant Baboon Swinging on a Vine, Zambia

After Dinner

Before dinner, Tinashe announced that since this was Africa, the men would eat first, and the women would serve them. All of the women except Rhona were shocked and offended. We all treated it as a joke, except for Rhona, who said, “Well, that’s the way it’s supposed to be.” The men explained to our hosts that it was not acceptable to Americans for women to serve the men. Tinashe said, “You know your way. Why not try ours? It is only for a fortnight. Why not at least give it a try? Then when you go home you can resume your old ways.” We ended up agreeing that the men would serve themselves first, and then we’d wait until the women finished serving themselves before starting to eat.

Alpha Male Baboon, Baobob Camp, Chobe, Botswana

On my way back from breakfast this morning, I saw the baboon families were still busy with their morning foraging. They were sitting around a broken tree in the veldt between the path and the river. Some were wrestling, most were eating, the alpha male sat at the top of a woodpile, occasionally barking at the other baboons when they got too close to him or strayed too far away, or the kids were getting out-of-hand. I counted more than 48, at least as many as last night. On the way to breakfast I saw them climb down from about a dozen trees into the scrub at the edge of the veldt. The males climbed down first with a lot of noise, and began staking out territory and hunting through the grass. When all the men were down, the mothers, who were smaller, most of them with babies attached to their chests, gracefully floated down, ghostly, making no noise at all. (The joints in a baboon’s finger locks, which is why babies don’t fall off no matter how fast the mothers run.) The younger mothers were still descending when the children began to jump from branch to branch, squawking and shaking the limbs. They didn’t climb down the tree like their parents—they climbed out on the lowest branches and then cried out for everyone to watch, and then they would do some fancy swing and catapult off the branch into the air, doing a somersault or a twist in the air, landing on all fours and then running off to join their comrades.

Path from My Cabin Looking Back Toward the Kitchen, Baobob Camp, Chobe, Botswana

I’d been warned not to leave the path for any reason. Before you get to the veldt where the impalas and baboons feed in the mornings, you have to cross the scrub, which is where the lions and leopards hide when they want to catch a baboon, one of their favorite foods. Not to mention the lightning-fast black mamba, whose venom has no known antidote, and other dangers. At night we can hear the lions and leopards as they walk through camp, and in the morning we can see their tracks in the dirt. But it’s rare to spot a lion or a leopard or a cheetah during the day, since they’re experts at not being seen, and are usually long gone before you get anywhere near them. A beginner like me doesn’t stand a chance in the bush. A skilled guide wouldn’t walk where I was about to go unless they had a gun and a good reason. And they wouldn’t take a handgun or a shotgun because you need the accuracy and stopping power of a rifle to drop one of the big cats before they reach you. If you don’t get a clean kill, the cat’s going to get to you before you can get off a second shot, and when he reaches you he’s going to be pretty pissed.

My Cabin, Baobob Camp, Botswana

But after breakfast there was plenty of light, and I looked pretty thoroughly and found an area where things were largely open, and I wouldn’t have to go far to get a good shot. There was one baboon I’d love to get a photo of—I noticed him last night and again this morning. One of the young males is missing his right hand and tail but seems to be doing fine, scavenging one-handed. I asked James if that would be from a predator attack and he thinks it’s from getting caught in a wire snare and having to chew his way out.

So I walked ten or fifteen feet off the trail and crouched, taking a photo. But I was still too far away for a good shot, so I checked out the area on either side of me and there was nowhere to hide so I walked a good 20 or 25 feet closer, and crouched again, but I was still too far away so I walked clean out of the scrub and into the veldt and crouched and took some photos, but I was still too far away from the alpha male, so I moved even closer. Once I cleared the scrub, though, the alpha male began squawking and most of the baboons scampered away. I realized that the closer I got, the farther away they retreated. Monkeys climb trees to escape from predators, but baboons feel safer on the ground.

Ever since I left the scrub I had two strong feelings—one of a force in front of me, drawing me in, pulling me, and the other one behind me, pushing me forward. I more or less stumbled forward as if going downhill, which I was more or less, not really in control. And I felt the presence of something intelligent that was slowly maneuvering itself between me and the trail, isolating me in their territory.

As I left the scrub and entered the veldt, I began rehearsing what I’d do if I encountered a predator out here. You’re taught to stand up as tall as you can, and wave your arms above your head and roar, and even lean toward them, if you can. They tell you that even when a lion or leopard charges you, 80% of the time the first pass is just testing to see how easy a kill you’ll be. If you stand up to them, they’ll likely go off and find an easier lunch. But if you run you raise your chances of becoming dinner to around 100 percent. Anything that’s running looks like dinner to a lion.

Just as I’m thinking about what I’d do, I hear something making a lot of aggressive noise—screeching and screaming—and coming at me through the bush. I turn around and all I can see is a long patch of flat grass, and then a slope of scrub and some kind of disturbance about twenty yards out and a little off to my right. Something is shaking the tall grass in my direction and screeching. I can’t believe how far I’ve gotten from the path—probably 50-60 yards—so far I can’t even see it. And when I get to the path, I’ve still got another 30-40 yards to get to the stairs that lead up to my cabin. I’m the last cabin from the dining hall, about a quarter mile out. No one would hear me from here even if I screamed. There was no way I could outrun an enraged baboon who wants to do me harm. I’d decided it was a baboon because I could hear the same screeching coming from behind me as soon as I turned my back to the veldt. But I could see that the baboon was being gracious. He was staying to my right, pushing me toward the path, doing all he could not to trap me. He didn’t want a fight and probably figured I would be more dangerous if I felt cornered. And I took the opening he gave me and I don’t care what the book said, I ran as fast as I could and didn’t stop until I was safe inside my cabin.

Mother Baboon with Baby, Zambia

Music from Mali

Track 1: Kairi Kairi, Samba Toure

Samba Toure is a Malian guitarist who backed Ali Farka Toure and began his solo career only after Ali Farka’s death.

Track 2: Aratane N’Adagh, Tamikrest

Tamikrest translates as “junction, alliance, the future.” This Tuareg band who sing in the language of Tamashek. The members of the band all come from the town of Kidal in northeast Mali and they went to school together in Tinawaten and a school founded by Europeans in the desert. , Ousmane Ag Mossa and his friend Cheick Ag Tiglia decided not to fight with weapons, but to call attention to the Tuareg’s cause with musical means. After a long independence struggle that marked their youth, troubles began again in 2006 and the members of Tamikrest decided instead of picking up guns they would start a band and make music instead.  In 2010, they toured Europe together and played at several European music festivals.

Track 3: Artist’va, Amadou & Mariam

Amadou Bagayoko (born in Bamako October 24 1954) and Mariam Doumbia (born April 15 1958) are both guitarists and vocalists who are known as “the blind couple of Mali.” They met at Mali’s Institute for the Young Blind, and performed together at the Institute’s Eclipse Orchestra. Between 1974 and 1980, Amadou played guitar in the famous band Les Ambassadeurs du Motel de Bamako. In 1980, Amadou and Mariam married and in 1983 they began performing together. In 1986, they moved to Cote d’Ivoire and recorded several cassettes. At this time they met Stevie Wonder and with his encouragement began playing in international music festivals. In 1996, they moved to Paris and released their first album outside of Africa. One of the tracks—“Je pense a toi”—was a hit in France and sold over 100,000 copies. In 2003, Manu Chao contacted them and produced and plays on their next album, “Dimanche a Bamako,” which that year won the French “Victoire de la Musique” Prize for best World Music album of the year, as well as two BBC Radio 3 Awards for World Music in the African and Best Album categories. In 2006, they recorded the official anthem for the 2006 FIFA World Cup (“Celebrate the Day”), which topped the German music charts in June 2006. They have played Coachella and Lollapalooza and Africa Express. They then supported the Scissors Sisters on their UK tour including three nights at London’s O2 Arena and have appeared with David Gilmour and Beth Orton on guitar. They have also appeared at the main stage of Glastonbury Festival, the iTunes Festival and Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, supported Blur during their reunion tour and Coldplay during their Viva la Vida tour, and in 2010 appeared on FIFA’s Kick-Off Celebration for 2010′s World Cup, and were chosen by Matt Groening to perform at the edition of the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival he curated in May 2010. In 2011, they supported U2 during their tour of southern Africa on their U2 360 tour. Their current album—“Folila”—includes members of TV on the Radio and Scissor Sisters and Santigold. For over a decade, they have been involved in many international charities—including the World Food Bank, efforts to aid humanitarian efforts in the Congo, and relief efforts in Haiti.

Track 4: Aitma, Tartit

“Tartit” means “union.” The group includes five women and four men, all of whom are Tuareg who met in a refugee camp in Burkina Faso. They first performed together in 1995, released their first album in 1997, and toured Europe in 1998 and North America in 2010 and appeared at the WOMAD Festival in Seattle and the Desert Music Festival. They are also involved in charity work, including a United Nation association for preserving Malian music and culture, in addition to building schools for children and creating economic opportunities for women.

Track 5: Banani, Bassekou Kouyate & Lobi Traore

Bassekou Kouyate was born in 1966 in Garana, Mali. His father was a ngoni player and his mother was a praise singer. He began playing the ngoni (an African lute) at the age of 12 and then moved to Bamako in the 1980s. He formed his band—Ngoni Ba—and released his first album in 2007, “Segu Blue.” He has recorded with Toumani Diabate and has toured with Bela Fleck. His wife, Ami Sacko, also plays in his band.

Lobi Traore (1961-2010) was born in the village of Bakaridianna on the Niger River. His first album was produced by Ali Farka Toure in 1994.

Track 6: Tenere Wer Zat Zinchegh, Terakaft

Terakaft (“caravan”) was formed in 2001 by two founding members of Tinariwen and now contains three former members who also continue to record and perform with Tinariwen. They recorded their first album and went on their first Europen tour in 2007.

Track 7: Fanta Bourana, Djelimady Tounkara

Djelimady Tounkara was born in Kita, west of Bamako. His family was filled with musicians, griots, and historians. He began playing a djembe and the ngoni. He moved to Bamako in the 1960s to be a tailor. He then began playing a guitar in the band Orchestre Misira and he was selected to join the Orchestre National as a rhythm guitarists. He continues to traditional weddings and baptisms as well performing in the acoustic trio called Bajourou along with singer Lafia Diabate, who was a member of the Rail Band. In 2001, he won BBC Radio 3’s World Music award.

Track 8: Arawan, Tinariwen

Tinariwen was formed in 1979 in the refugee camps of Libya and returned to Mali after a cease-fire in the 1990s. At the age of four, founder Ibrahim Ag Alhabib, witnessed the execution of his father, a Tuareg rebel, during the 1963 uprising in Mali. At about this time he saw a western film in which a cowboy played a guitar and he built one out of a tin can, a stick, and a bicycle brake wire while he lived in refugee camps with other Tuareg exiles in Libya and Algeria. In the late 1970s, he joined other Tuareg rebels singing chaabi (protest music) with Nass El Ghiwane and Jil Jilala. He began his own band to play at parties and weddings. They acquired their first real acoustic guitar in 1979. While the group had no official name, people began to call them “Kel Tinariwen”—which in the Tamashek language translates as “The People of the Deserts” or “The Desert Boys.”

In 1980, Libyan ruler Muammar al-Gaddafi invited all Tuareg men in Libya to receive full military training. Ag Alhabib and his bandmates received nine months of training and returned to Libya in 1985 with leaders of the Tuareg rebel movement where he met the musicians who would become Tinariwen. They built a makeshift studio and recorded music for free for anyone who supplied a blank cassette tape. These homemade cassettes were traded throughout the whole Sahara region. In 1989, the members of Tinariwen left Libya and Ag Alhabib moved back to his home village of Tessalit for the first time in 26 years. In 1990, the Tuareg rebels—including several members of Tinariwen—rose up against the government of Mali, until a peace agreement reached in January 1991. At that time the members of the band left the rebel forces and returned to music. In 1992 the band went to the Ivory Coast to make a professional recording. In 1998, they were discovered by musician and producer Lo’Jo, and in 1999 some members went to travel to France and performed with Lo’Jo under the name Azawad. They went on to headline the 2001 Festival of the Desert, and then performed at WOMAD and Roskilde.  Their debut CD “The Radio Tisdas Sessions” was recorded by Justin Adams and released in 2001. In 2005 they received a BBC Award for World Music and in 2008 they received Germany’s Praetorius Music Prize. In 2009 they recorded “Imidiwan” in a mobile studio in the village of Tessalit, Mali. They have performed at All Tomorrow’s Parties and toured the US. Members of the band appeared with TV on the Radio on the Colbert Report in 2011.

Track 9: Mississippi-Mali Blues, Toumani Diabete & Taj Mahal

Toumani Diabete was born into a family of 71 generations of kora players on August 10, 1965. His father—Sidiki Diabate—recorded the first kora album in 1970. His cousin Sona Jobarteh is the first female kora player to come from a Griot family. Toumani released his first album in 1988. He has also performed with the flamenco group Ketama, and with Taj Mahal, Ali Farka Toure, Roswell Rudd, and appears on Bjork’s 2007 album “Volta.” In 2006 he released his first album with the Symmetric Orchestra, featuring kora players from throughout western Africa. Toumani appeared that year at the WOMAD Festival, the Roskilde Festival, and the Glastonbury Festival. In 2008 a song of his which is sung in Arabic was removed from a PlayStation 3 video game because of Islamic complaints that the lyrics contained verses from the Koran. In 2010, Toumani was chosen by Matt Groening to perform at his All Tomorrow’s Parties and other festivals in England.

Taj Mahal was born Henry Saint Clair Fredericks on May 17, 1942 in Harlem, New York. His mother was a member of a gospel choir, and his father was a West Indian jazz arranger and piano player. He heard world music as a young boy on a shortwave radio. His father developed an interest in African music which Taj began studying along with taking lessons on piano, clarinet, trombone, and harmonica. His father died in an accident when Taj was eleven, and his stepfather played guitar and Taj began taking lessons when he was thirteen. In 1964 he formed the first interracial bands, the Rising Sons, with Ry Cooder and Jessie Lee Kincaid. He was recorded with international musicians such as The Chieftains, Ali Farka Toure, and Fela Kuti, but it is his recordings with Toumani Diabate that he believes “embodies his musical and cultural spirit arriving full circle.” At that point he even changed his name to Dadi Kouyate.

Track 10: Mil-Jul (edit), Trilok Gurtu & the Frikyiwa Family

Trilok Gurtu is an Indian percussionist who was born in Mumbai on October 30 1951. The Frikyiwa is a Malian band that includes guitars and other African stringed instruments, vocals, and additional percussion. Recorded in southern Mali in the village of Farakala, song contains south-Malian percussive styles with the rhythmic influences of Trilok’s Indian heritage.

Track 11: Bana, Issa Bagayogo

Issa is a Malian n’goni player born in 1961.

Track 12: Djorolen (Worry, Anxiety), Oumou Sangare

This is the original version of a song that appeared earlier in this series. Oumou Sangare was born on February 25, 1968 in Bamako, Mali and is a Wassoulou singer. Her mother is singer Aminata Diakite. Since the age of five she sang to help support  her family after her father abandoned them. At 16 she toured with the percussion group Djoliba. As a solo performer she has appeared at the Melbourne Opera, the Roskilde festival, and the festival d’Essaouira. She won the UNESCO Prize in 2001 and became a commander of the Arts and Letters of the Republic of France in 1998. She is featured in the documentary “Throw Down your Heart,” a documentary featuring Bela Fleck’s exploration of the relationship of his banjo to its African forebears. She is an advocate for women’s rights, opposing child marriage and polygamy. She is also a businesswoman who owns hotels, farms, and car dealerships. Her name is even on a Chinese automobile.

Article Written by Randy Roark

Newtopia staff writer RANDY ROARK worked with Allen Ginsberg for the last 17 years of his life, first as an apprentice, then as his teaching assistant, and finally transcribing and editing 28,000 pages of Ginsberg’s poetry lectures, currently available on-line through the Ginsberg trust. Following Ginsberg’s death, he worked with artist Stan Brakhage, producing art events featuring his films until his death. Since 1998 he has worked with Sounds True as a producer, where he has edited artists such as Alex Grey, writers including William Burroughs and Robert Anton Wilson, and a wide variety of spiritual teachers, including Alan Watts, Krishnamurti, Jack Kornfield, Pema Chodron, and Lakota Elder Joseph Marshall.

Talk to Her, 2002
Award Winning Writer and Director, Pedro Almodovar
Starring Javier Camara, Dario Grandinetti, Rosario Flores, Leonor Watling, Geraldine Chaplin

Cinemashrink says:

In the midst of planning a trip to Spain and having just seen Pina, a splendid 2011 documentary tribute to Pina Bausch by Wim Wenders, I was eager to return to Almodovar’s 2002 Talk to Her.  I remembered the film’s opening scenes of Café Muller as an archetypal dance.  And in anticipation of our upcoming travel in Spain, I was also sure Pedro Almodovar would stir up excitement with his deft flair for embellishing patriarchal symbolism with spicy feminine images.

If Almodovar had called his film “Talk to Him”, I could’ve imagined I was going to be urged to discover the rewards of expressing my deepest longings to the designated immanent being of mankind – the usual, God in male persona. But, instead, he was urging, Talk to Her?  Her?  Well, of course, this was going to be a film urging men to talk to women, but then, I found it went bit further.  It urges us viewers to wonder about a strange world, an unusual one, the divine one where miracles happen.  At the center of Talk to Her is a “coming back to life” story calling us to the mysteries of the feminine.

Talk to Her opens non-verbally in dance, the body expressing more emotion in a gesture than words could conjure.  In one of the most famous of Pina Bausch’s dance performances, Café Muller, men dash quickly to remove chairs from women dancing blindly with abandon without seeing where they are going.  Men removing obstacles from the beauty of women’s free flight is a metaphor so powerful, it brings tears to the eyes.  Two men – strangers – sit next to each other in the audience watching Café Muller.   In fact, one does cry.  The other looks at him, touched by his tears but saying nothing.  They will meet again.

Talk to Her brings these two men together to break a silence that so often covers up feelings and separates people, reinforcing a painful aloneness. Talk, as we all know, is the province of women.  Hence, entering the province, men enter the mysteries of the feminine and find what they’re missing – feelings for one another and for the ‘other’, a woman.

The man who cries, Marco, is a freelance writer, a traveler of the world, macho strong in looks and suffering silently from a lost love fifteen years past.  He’s smitten with a famous female bullfighter, Lydia, whose husband has left her, leaving her embarrassed in public and vulnerable to the press.  He reaches out to her, offering to do a story that will rescue her from hostile publicity.  The plot thickens as the two ride a rocky road of sexual attraction that could, perhaps, become something more if they were not both plagued by attachments to their previous relationships.  He attempts to overcome his own doubts with declarative statements of love for her but she demurs, saying, “We’ve got to talk”, alluding to unspoken assumptions.

The man seated next to Marco is Benigno, an odd voyeuristic fellow for sure.  He is a highly sensitive male nurse who lives alone in the apartment where he grew up with his mother, cared for her until she died.  He’s fallen in love with a dancer, Alicia who he’s never met, only watched practicing in a studio across from his apartment window.  He slowly begins to act on his fascination, returning a purse she’s dropped on the street, making an appointment with her psychiatrist father and spiriting a comb out of her apartment. And then, going beyond Benigno’s wildest dreams, Alicia is in a car accident and ends up in his almost 24-hour care at the local hospital — his sleeping beauty, the love of his life and a woman for whom he will die.  While she lies silent in a coma, he keeps up a flow of talk, indulging himself as if she were an eager participant.

With all the magical allusions synchronicity conjures up, the female matador also meets with an accident that renders her unconscious in the same hospital down the hall from Benigno and the dancer.  The two men are thrown together one more time and, as different as they are, this time they become close friends.  Benigno, who talks endlessly to Alicia, tries to get Marco to open his heart to Lydia.  Marco tries to get Benigno to see the futility of one-sided love.  Fantasy driven Benigno and reality bound Marco are like two sides of one coin, forming a strong albeit not well explored emotional bond.

Benigno enters into an ever-expanding world of make-believe with Alicia, developing an arguably closer relationship with this woman in a coma than would ever be likely in his ordinary life.  Benigno’s love of Alicia may be pure. No one questions it.  He doesn’t seem sexually mature to anyone.  His being moved by an unconscious woman’s passivity as if she were alive is never taken as anything more than devoted caretaking.  When Alicia is discovered pregnant and Benigno is accused of impregnating the unconscious dancer, he neither confirms nor denies.  But the facts (and Almodovar’s suggestive animated imagery) say it’s so.

When Benigno announces his intentions to marry Alicia, saying to Marco, “I want to marry her”, Marco thinks he’s kidding and gets annoyed.  Nothing could be more absurd to Marco.  “You can’t marry her, she can’t say ‘yes’.”  But Marco, who has charged ahead with his own plans for marrying Lydia is also guilty of never having asked her and listened for an answer.  In fact, he’s edged out of Lydia’s life by her husband’s return to her bedside in the hospital, finding out from him that they were on the verge of reconciliation when the accident occurred.  Neither man in either world considers talking to a woman as meaning that a woman talks back.

Benigno, jailed for his offense, slips further and further into oblivion. Marco, by contrast, does the ‘manly’ thing.  He throws himself into work, signing up for farflung travel assignments – until he hears that Benigno is in jail. Marco feels compelled to return and see what he can do for Benigno.  Unconcerned about imprisonment, Benigno simply wants to know how Alicia is, when he can see her.  Marco discovers the ill-begotten pregnancy ended in a stillbirth for the child but a full recovery for the mother!   He’s determined to get Benigno released from jail but he has agreed to silence about Alicia’s condition.  Benigno, deprived of information and believing Alicia died in childbirth, commits suicide.

In another one of those great Almodovar synchronous storytelling events that evolve culture as well as character, Marco and the recovered Alicia, meet at yet another performance of Pina Bausch.  Marco, a changed man, is openly eager to talk to this woman who looks with open eyes and talks back.  Keeping silent has not gone well for him and he has the legacy of his friendship with Benigno still fresh in his mind.  He may even wonder whether Benigno talking to Alicia in a coma enlivened her, contributing to her recovery.  Since science is still looking for the mind, it’s not so far fetched to believe that talking stimulates a process that leads to an awakening from a coma.  I go back to my beginning of seeking the divine ‘Her’ in “Talk to Her”.  We may get our fondest longings met talking to “Her”.

When Marco turns around in his seat to talk to Alicia, their talk must go across an empty chair in the row between them, suggestive of a silence not of their own making but with an invisible, miracle-making Benigno present, encouraging them to cross it.

Article Written By Dr. Jane Alexander Stewart

Newtopia staff writer Jane Alexander Stewart, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist in Los Angeles who writes essays about mythic themes in film, creates “Myth in Film; Myth in Your Life” seminars for self-exploration and travels a lot. Her film reviews have been published in the San Francisco C.G. Jung Library Journal, Spring: A Journal of Archetype and Culture and Los Angeles Journal of Psychological Perspectives.  Jane’s popular essay on “The Feminine Hero in The Silence of the Lambs” appears in the anthology, The Soul of Popular Culture, and in The Presence of the Feminine in Film as one of its authors. She’s also presented myth in film programs at Los Angeles County Museum, University of Alabama and C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich. A collection of her reviews and other writing can be found at www.CinemaShrink.com.

The front zipper is a silver curiosity in dim lit bars. It’s a little metal exposure and a method.

Within it is the incidentals of my life. There is a cheap dime store mascara to create ironic black lashes, clumped sexuality, the ultimate flutter, and the fuck opener. There is burgundy lipstick, expensive like desire, that smoothes on like silk. There is a powder that grips the lip and melts into the color of flesh. It’s the flush of the big bang; the round O. It’s the dark tint of blood.

There is a name- written on a slip of white paper. A mystery of my ex-husband’s creased permanently with a line of loose powder and grime. It was one of the keys that unlocked my lips and forced my tongue to twirl out the request for separation.

There is the address of an artist from Santa Fe who became my first rebound pet. He had a girl’s name and I knew him over the course of five conversations. GTE was our anonymous tool and our educator. We were liars.

There is a handy wipe from an old fried chicken dinner.

It’s been six months since I left.

A warped plastic business card holder bulges with a one-inch thick stack. The 2 x 4’s packed into it are already dying, having recently been wet, the juice of pulp mashing out the particulars of name, date, place, association, into an obsolete soil.

A letter is frantically scribbled on legal paper from my last lover.  Is there a problem? Call me! PLEASE!

My new boyfriend Chris’ phone number is there, balled up on lined notebook paper in a corner pocket, from when we hadn’t yet memorized each other, when I was still infamous and strange, and he was not yet real. It’s odd how we perceive human contact, how it de-bones us.

There is an ancient invitation to a family barbecue that I neglected in my preference to not be invited to the past.

Flipping up the flap reveals my weed dealer’s number written on a stick-it note, including my own code to page him with.

A blackberry lip-gloss is depleted and smudged, sooty and void, remnants of a lip discovering its beauty. The empty cartridge is a memento of power.

The black eyeliner goes into the trash bin immediately. Garbage day is over. Small renovations like these rid the crusty eyebrow façade of painter-masquerader.

There is a personal agenda that has failed to do its deed. Empty pages of years, months, blank columns, the future, reminders of misery, job hunts and needing impossibilities like money. Sheets of dreams and desperation between black patent leather. Jottings presented in a myriad of scrawl depending on time or location and the temperature of anxiety peppering any given moment of recording that name, that address, that number correctly. Did I hear you right?

And finally, there is an address book that makes me feel shame and liberation simultaneously.

It is full of those from the past six months:

• A French restaurant waiter with long hair and a boring health nut tendency to run marathons.
• The tattoo parlor where Joe needled my flesh as I watched Chris’ arm transform into an orange dragon.
• A friend from high school who is still in love with me, who says his knees start to buckle when he looks into my eyes.
• A girl I used as a mere body to fill in the empty seats at restaurants, bars, movies, and street fairs who tweaked all my greatest insecurities.
• Chris’ number again like graphite, like a persistent carving in stone.
• A string of relatives and therapists.
• A guy who helped nurse my wounds through the divorce by taking me out in broad daylight to shoot pool and drink beer.
• A photographer who fell head over heels for me the first time we met whose kindness scared the raw nerve of me.

Why do I save this address book when these recollections bring renewed torture?

At the bottom, loose and forgotten are a lip tone tinted chapstick, a business card from a nail salon, a gas card, and peppermint candy. These are all things that hint at my post-longterm-relationship jump into vanity, the great swan dive into being alone that lived with me for the first days of my single status. The way I wore my hair, the new color on my toes, the sex appeal that oozed from me and beckoned someone new.

It’s time to throw away this backpack; this container of a fallen female; these shaky clues of a woman suddenly cut loose from everything she had known before.

I save three things though. From the very bottom, I pull out a gray iron lock, a black barrette and a buckle. The lock reminds me of what I find safe and what I do not. The black barrette that looks girlie reminds me of loss and redemption. And the buckle will unclasp when I decide to finally unbuckle the door that has closed over my heart.

Short Story Written by Kimberly Nichols

Newtopia managing editor KIMBERLY NICHOLS is author of the book of literary short fiction Mad Anatomy, a contributing editor to 3AM Magazine and has exhibited as a conceptual artist throughout California for the past decade. Her non-fiction articles have appeared in magazines and media internationally. She was a founding editor of Newtopia in its former incarnation where she was also a member of the NewPoetry Collective. She is currently at work on her novel Fish Tales: Looking for the Bird with the Golden Feather. Follow her daily beat poetry on Twitter @LITGFOA or her arts and literature blog.

If you’re a film buff polishing your list for 2011
Scroll through  my 12 Feature + 3 Documentary Film Capsules
Because there’s a little of you in each one. 

The Rum Diary starring Johnny Depp, 2011

If you’re wondering what path to take in a world made by others
See The Rum Diary for a rowdy walk with a freelancer
Because you’ll find yourself loving who you are when it’s over.

Another Earth starring Brit Marling, 2011

If you’re a believer in second chances
See Another Earth to get past stereotypes of wasted life
Because no one – I mean no one – knows what’s around the corner.

The Ides of March starring Ryan Gosling, George Clooney, 2011

If you’re reluctantly fascinated by twists of fate in power politics
See The Ides of March throw innocence and idealism in the dirt
Because betrayal is no game — it’s a tragedy.

Anonymous starring Vanessa Redgrave, Rhys Ifans, 2011

If you’re intrigued by conjecture, open to new configurations
See Anonymous cast Shakespeare in Olde England’s politics
Because “truth is truth, to the end of reckoning.”

Moneyball starring Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill, 2011

If you’re tired of glamour and glitz (and love baseball)
See Moneyball put a geek up to bat, back faith with smarts
Because extraordinary is only a few numbers from ordinary.

J. Edgar starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Judi Dench, 2011

If you’re a student of character, a close observer of ambition in high places
See J. Edgar forge a federal backbone from secret files and coded fingerprints
Because force of personality bestows a lasting legacy better known than ignored.   

The Descendants with George Clooney, George Clooney & George Clooney, 2011

If you’re a sucker for superlative film blurbs in advertisements
See The Descendants leave rare inherited land to a dysfunctional family
Because this land is their land, it’s not our land, not yours, not mine.  

Midnight in Paris with Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, 2011

If you’re looking for the romance and glamour of a bygone age
See Woody Allen make dreams come true with Midnight in Paris
Because the mind is more than a cross-town taxi — it’s a time machine.

The Artist starring Jean Dujardin, Berenice Bejo and John Goodman, 2011

If you’re looking for a movie as memorable as it is fresh
See The Artist pan old-fashioned silence for gold when times change
Because hope is in the air, around the next corner, in your shoes. 

Poetry starring Yoon Jeong-hee, 2011

If you’re wondering how to make sense of the senseless
See Poetry, where a quiet older woman reforms ugliness
Because you’ll find the poet within

Hugo directed by Martin Scorsese, 2011

If you’re someone who likes things to run like clockwork
See Hugo repurpose images from the past for new inspiration
Because imagination is more than fun, it’s the fifth dimension.

The Flowers of War directed by Zhang Yimou, 2011

If you’re taken with archetypal imagery, open to fables of war
See The Flowers of War celebrate fantasy, sacrifice beauty
Because terrors of war by any enemy shatter real people.

Three Outstanding Documentaries

Cave of Forgotten Dreams exquisitely filmed by Werner Herzog, 2011

If you’re an old soul yearning for today’s “aha!”
See proof of 32,000-year-old human spiritus in Cave of Forgotten Dreams
Because consciousness was always magic, still is and will be tomorrow.

Bill Cunningham New York, delightfully filmed by Richard Press, 2011

If you’re looking for the pleasure of age at any age
See Bill Cunningham capture NYC streets live, camera in hand
Because esprit de vie is catchy, catching and catch-able!

Pina, tribute to Pina Bausch directed by Wim Wenders, 2011

If you’re a true believer in soul
See Pina set the body free to dance life, love and longing
Because full immersion in emotion has never been finer.

Article Written by Dr. Jane Alexander Stewart

Newtopia staff writer Jane Alexander Stewart, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist in Los Angeles who writes essays about mythic themes in film, creates “Myth in Film; Myth in Your Life” seminars for self-exploration and travels a lot. Her film reviews have been published in the San Francisco C.G. Jung Library Journal, Spring: A Journal of Archetype and Culture and Los Angeles Journal of Psychological Perspectives.  Jane’s popular essay on “The Feminine Hero in The Silence of the Lambs” appears in the anthology, The Soul of Popular Culture, and in The Presence of the Feminine in Film as one of its authors. She’s also presented myth in film programs at Los Angeles County Museum, University of Alabama and C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich. A collection of her reviews and other writing can be found at www.CinemaShrink.com.

HOW TO FIX A REPUBLIC

Buddy Roemer wants you to understand that the only way to save our country is to reform our elections. Today Kucinich proposed an amendment to end Citizens United, which would require all federal campaigns to be financed exclusively with public funds. We all know how easy getting anything past the House and Senate is these days but it’s a nice gesture.  Buddy Roemer believes the only way to  achieve campaign reform is transparency and limits.  He wants criminal charges for hiding the identities of donors. As he has said sunlight heals. He’s the only candidate who refuses to take any money from special interests, PACs or lobbyists.  He limits his donations to one hundred dollars.  Since the 1% pay most of what elections cost, he’s hoping the other 99% of us will get the idea and pitch in so we can clean up politics in America.  As he has said: “It will take one million contributors in the primary to win, and five million in the general. It can be done in the age of the internet.”

HOW NOT TO FIX A REPUBLIC

What’s a voter to do?  Everyone knows how important the 2012 election is, except those of us who think it doesn’t matter because it’s all at worst a sham and at best a logjam.  The U.S. economy is still floundering and in danger of being pulled under by the drowning E.U.  The environmental consequences of our energy decisions are still on display in the gulf and at Fukushima.  Our desire for security is threatening our liberty with levels of citizen surveillance never attempted before, and we see the erosion of our rights by the passage of new laws that undermine the Constitution.  Our educational system is expensive and ineffective.  Our infrastructure is dated and rickety.  We need a candidate who can bring a new way of doing things to the gridlock that is Washington D.C.

On the GOP side we have a hateful Newt promising to ignore laws he disagrees with and to dismiss judges and federal employees who don’t share his ideology; Ron Paul who mixes startling lucidity with moments of extremism, not to mention promising what can’t be delivered; Rick Santorum, Christian crusader; and the ultimate Stepford candidate Mitt Romney, a vulture capitalist who has contradicted almost everything he himself has said at one time or another.  The GOP is suffering several civil wars in one.  The Tea Party libertarians, the Christian fundamentalists and conservative Catholics, and the old school Wall Street party for the wealthy can’t agree on much of anything except how much they want to replace President Obama.

And what about the President?  It’s hard to find a Democrat who isn’t disappointed in him.  At best apologists point out his struggle facing a do nothing GOP congress and senate, where Democrats also oppose him, for example voting with their wallets by supporting SOPA when he didn’t.  Environmentalists think Obama hasn’t done enough for green energy.  Feminists say he hasn’t stood up for women’s rights at a time when we have seen unprecedented attacks by the GOP on choice and laws against domestic violence.  Meanwhile the President staffs his administration with Wall Street insiders, Goldman Sachs talent, and prepares to launch a billion dollar election extravaganza diametrically opposed to his original platform of campaign reform.

ME?  SUPPORT A GOP CANDIDATE?

I’ve always thought of the GOP as the butt end of the same coin the Democrats are on.  I gave up on both parties awhile back, though I did help a little with the Obama campaign, not so much because I bought the hope hype; I was dedicated to dumping the Republicans after eight years of W.   I’ve never once considered voting for a Republican.  But I’m considering it now.  Buddy Roemer is not your typical Republican.  For example he visited OWS and gave speeches supporting it when his GOP colleagues were dismissing it with the latest professionally devised catch phrases. 

We certainly don’t agree on some issues; he’s not my dream pro choice candidate; he has said he would defund Planned Parenthood, he’s against the use of taxpayer money for abortions; but having said that, he vetoed two abortion bans when he was governor.  The second one didn’t protect the life of the mother.  Roemer said it wouldn’t stand up to Roe vs. Wade.  It likely cost him his reelection.  When the bill passed anyway it was finally judged invalid, costing taxpayers plenty.  Buddy says he’s a Methodist when it comes to choice.  He thinks protecting the mother is just as important as protecting the child.  He’s also mentioned in this context the separation of church and state.  He’s proud of being a listener, so I hope he’ll come to understand why Planned Parenthood was a Godsend to me and still is to many others.

I cast a skunk eye at fracking, nuclear energy, and deep water drilling, but I also realize solar, wind and the other renewables have a long way to go. Buddy Roemer supports drilling but he wants the industry to maintain a reserve of resources for immediate cleanup.  He also wants regulators to be independent of producers.  He says we’re paying a terrible price for foreign oil in lives, and money.  He wants to tariff domestic oil to use the revenue to pay down the national debt.  He’d end all subsidies for all energy businesses to level the playing field.  Some knowledgeable people in solar and other renewable energy companies should get in touch because I think Buddy Roemer would listen to them.  He comes from a state where they’ve been digging for natural gas since the 1800′s, but he took on the oil and gas industries when he was governor, and that takes serious cajones in the state of Louisiana where so much money flows from oil and gas.

Of gay marriage he says gay people are protected by the constitution and should be. Personally he’s opposed to gay marriage, but he points out that each church must decide for itself whether to marry gay couples. Separation of church and state.  

His proposals about Medicare and Social Security recognize the power of incremental change over twenty years.  A gradual approach that allows time for adjustment not only for recipients but also for the government, should conditions change.  Most important of all, his plan gives businesses and individuals certainty.

How would he create jobs?  Besides giving decision makers the kind of certainty that’s impossible in today’s highly partisan gridlock, he’s an advocate of fair trade.  Our trade relationship with China made sense when we were helping lift them into the world economy, but things have changed.  Globalization doesn’t have to be a one-way street.  Fair trade means China starts to live up to higher standards and better pay for their workers instead of us having to live down to compete for jobs with people getting paid pennies.  Made in America was once the world standard.  People preferred to buy American.  You got good value and superior quality.  American businesses should be given incentives for buying American.

He would enforce immigration laws, but set quotas based on the needs of the labor market, instead of a number chosen by electioneering political policy.  He would study ways to allow illegals to go home and apply for citizenship, while protecting immigrants here legally from suffering discrimination.

To prevent another economic crisis this successful banker would increase capital reserves for big banks, and end too big to fail by restoring the separation of commercial banking from investment banking.  That separation was made after the 1929 market crash, and undone by the enthusiasm for deregulation, leading right to the 2008 crash.

His tax plan is 17% with the first 50k exempt.  No loopholes.  No deductions.  Just a simple tax.  Corporations get the same treatment, no loopholes.  Their tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas gone. No national sales tax.

His solution for health care includes coverage of preexisting conditions but no mandate.  But how will companies profit, you wonder, when only sick people want insurance?  He would let consumers buy insurance across state lines, enact tort reform as he did in Louisiana, and bring competition back to the pharmaceutical industry.

When you hear him say he wants to board up the top floors of the Department of Education keep in mind what he thinks the department should be:  “a small and professional body that focuses on data collection and acquiring best practices that show how schools around the country and the world have improved education.“

These aren’t sexy solutions, calculated to rile up the base.  These are common sense approaches and they’re not hot air, they’re inspired by experience.

CLEANING UP THE MAGNOLIA STATE

Now, a little history.  Charles Elson “Buddy” Roemer III is the son of Charles E. Roemer II, former campaign manager and then commissioner of administration for the notorious Louisiana governor Edwin Washington Edwards.  Edwards was the classic charismatic but crooked southern governor, enjoying four terms even though everyone knew he was corrupt.  His supporters excused him by pointing out he generally stole from the wealthy and he didn’t make much of a secret of it.  Buddy Roemer’s father went to jail for a scandal that most people think should have sent Governor Edwards to jail; fall guy was the phrase frequently mentioned.

After graduating from Harvard, and returning to work with his father at a pioneering computer company, in1978 Buddy Roemer ran for Louisiana’s 4th congressional district but he didn’t make it past the primaries.  Two years later he was elected; unopposed he was elected again in 1982, 1984, and 1986.   As a Congressman, he was what they called a boll weevil, he was a southern Democrat who often voted in support of the policies of Ronald Reagan.

At the end of his third term Governor Edwards wasn’t quite as popular as he had been.  He could only charm his way through so much corruption.  Louisiana was dead last in many measures of how states are doing in the United States.  Roemer ran for office calling for a “Roemer Revolution.”  He promised to “scrub the budget,” reform campaign finance, cut the red tape of state bureaucracy, and fix the woeful educational system.  Those problems sound pretty familiar don’t they?

Governor Roemer convened a special session of the Louisiana Legislature to push an ambitious tax and fiscal reform program statewide and locally.  He aimed to slash spending, abolish wasteful programs, and close ineffective state-run institutions, giving more power to local communities.  Voters rejected his proposals in a statewide constitutional referendum.  He also worked to protect the environment, despite opposition from the state’s mighty oil and gas interests, and from a state legislature still stuffed with cronies of Edwin Edwards.

How did Buddy do? He reduced 12+ percent unemployment by half.  He tested teachers, who were paid less than anywhere else in the US, and gave the ones who passed a thirty percent raise.  The state budget was a mess, yet he balanced it the very first year and every year after without new taxes. Louisiana bonds, the lowest rated in the US, received five upgrades during his administration.  Louisiana had the worst air and water toxicity in America.  He closed loopholes, used tax incentives, penalized offenders and won a Sierra Club award for cleaning up the state.  

To raise more revenue for the state he legalized and regulated gambling, restoring the state’s iconic riverboat gambling businesses.

In 1991 after twenty years as a Democrat, Governor Roemer joined the GOP, just a few months before the next election.  He opposed many of the policies of the Democratic Party, he has said it had changed so much since the seventies he felt more comfortable joining like minded politicians in the GOP.  The change was unpopular with Democrats and Republicans alike and didn’t help his chances for reelection.  Caught between the improbably triumphant return of Edwin Edwards and the KKK candidacy of Duke, he finished third and Governor Edwards served his fourth term.  Two years after it ended Edwards was indicted and convicted.

Buddy Roemer ran for governor again in 1995 and ironically was knocked out during the primaries by a conservative state senator who switched from Democrat to Republican during his campaign.  Ah the fickle electorate, what they didn’t like today may thrill them four years later.  In Louisiana the feeling persists that Governor Roemer should have been one of the all time greats, but the state was too big a mess, his staff inexperienced and too ready to step on important toes, his agenda too ambitious; no wonder as you’ll see during this interview he has sympathy for Barack Obama.

HOW A GOOD AMERICAN BANK HANDLED THE FORECLOSURE CRISIS

Buddy Roemer left politics for the world of business.  He built retirement communities for alumni close to their beloved alma maters.  He started Business First Bank of Baton Rouge.  The nature of that bank tells us a lot about Buddy Roemer.  They don’t have nationwide or international branches.  They specialize in what their name tells you: putting local business first.  They didn’t get caught up in the derivatives and quarterly profits circus that crashed the world economy because they stayed focused on what they did best instead of mindlessly growing.  They took no bailout money.  They restructured loans instead of foreclosing on mortgages. They even pay the ATM fees for their customers. 

I know what you’re thinking.  First I got sweet-talked by a smooth talking black man from Chicago, now I’m falling for a Louisiana boy “campaign shouting like a southern diplomat.”  He hasn’t got a chance, you want to tell me.  They won’t let him into the debates.  The national media refuses to take his campaign seriously.  I know.  But that’s where the fun begins.  As far as I’m concerned his main message about campaign reform is more important than any of the usual flavors of fake pedaled by the professionals.  And there’s this thing called Americans Elect, google it if you don’t know about it.  I think Buddy Roemer and Americans Elect could be made for each other.  I think he’s a guy the Tea Party and OWS could agree on.

To some people DIY means amateur.  But I know what DIY really means.  It’s about staying true to what you know is right.  It’s about loving freedom.  Could it be that Buddy Roemer is the DIY candidate?  Could Americans Elect be the DIY party? And with the GOP reeling from one scandal and attack ad to the next, maybe they’ll wake up and smell the coffee and invite Buddy Roemer to explain how he’d change the game for the better.  This election could get much more interesting.

You can read the key points of his platform at his website under the Issues tab.  http://www.buddyroemer.com

INTERVIEW WITH BUDDY ROEMER (Conducted January 19, 2012)

As we talk the online blackout to protest SOPA and PIPA are live across the Internet and your campaign website is blacked out, too, except for a short paragraph that ends: “How can we advocate for greater liberties in China and around the world while restricting our own?”  Amen. So what’s a better way to control the pirating corporations complain about?

They have a choice to make.  They can choose to do business or not in China.  These guys are businesswomen and men. They work for profit.  They’re the ones that developed the Chinese market with the government breathing down their necks, stealing their ideas, pirating their IP, and they say nothing? I had a CEO of a major corporation, a top 500 corporation, tell me that they had lost 85% of their potential sales in China from piracy.  And I asked him why do you remain? And here’s his answer: damn good question.  All of these free traders got the idea that these foreign countries were like America that they would trade freely.  Well they aren’t like America and they don’t trade freely. The biggest criminal area, illegality area, is the whole business of IP, patents and software.  We need to set a standard, each individual company, as to what they will and will not stand for, and they need to pull out of China if the government does not enforce the rules of liberty.  I don’t believe China will.  Let me go a step further. I’ve been to China many times, as you know, and I have sold American made products there, and it’s like pulling teeth.  They want to flood this country with their cheap products, made often by child labor, in plants that could not open legally in America, and they don’t want anybody to say anything about it.  But try to put an American made product in there and it takes an act of their parliament. So it’s not free trade, it’s not fair trade, it’s piracy.  In the United States our companies are flexible, focused, fast and friendly, what I call the four F’s. We don’t need the government to regulate the Internet.  We need to have it be a place of confusion, innovation, and entrepreneurship. When we see violators of the truth, or of other people’s rights, then they can be prosecuted under the criminal justice system of the freest country on earth, the United States of America.  We don’t need more laws.  We need more citizens involved.  We need more freedom, and we need to let the chips fall where they may.

You’ve been a congressman and as governor you cut enormous state unemployment by half during your term, balancing the budget, and improving education.  You run a billion dollar bank that didn’t get caught up in the Wall Street debacle. Yet you’ve been excluded from the debates.  A beautiful example of what happens to independents in a society of cliques, sound bytes and corporate culture, the same thing that happened to the music business, and the movies, happened to politics, too.  So how can authenticity prevail in a world of croney-ism and manipulation?

There are no easy answers here.  Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.  The influence of money is just an example of that.  If you think Washington D.C. is a fair shake, if you think Washington D.C. is on the level, you just don’t understand what happens in America.  It’s the few elite at the top, no one else counts. I have decided, I did it about a year ago, that the only way to bring change was to stand up.  That’s what I’m doing.  I’m not pretending to be the best candidate for president.  Maybe there are others better than I, no doubt about it.  But I am saying that of all the people that have announced to run I’m the only one that doesn’t take checks from the corporate interests or from the special interests.  Therefore I’m the only one who will be free to lead on fair trade, on tax reform, on immigration reform, I’m the only one, and everything works against me.  I haven’t been invited to any debate.  It’s been a real struggle. But let me give you the good news. Last week was our best week in the year that we’ve been running.  We raised more money, got a higher standing in the polls, we got to three percent.  We’ve had contributions from all fifty states.  We’ve had fifteen thousand to twenty thousand people who have contributed to our campaign an average of 25 to sixty dollars, that’s the way I like it.  No PAC money. No Super PAC money.  Everything reported.  I am so proud of what we stand for.  Now my hope is to get beyond pride and get to the practical business of getting people’s attention.  I’m not going to be able to do that unless I’m invited to one of these debates.  I’m hoping that somehow some way somewhere they’ll take the only person who is running who has been a governor and a congressman and say, what do you think, Buddy?  That’s when our campaign starts.

The key to your policy is campaign reform.  You’re waking people up to the fact that until we take the dark money and big lobbies out of politics nothing else can get fixed.  That can’t be pleasing to the people who grease their wheels with all that money.  To what do we owe this foolhardy bravery?  

Experience.  I grew up in a state where politics was corrupt. We had very flamboyant governors, they were very popular and they were very polished politicians.  We had the highest unemployment rate in America.  We had teachers who were not paid.  We had bond ratings that were the worst in the country.  We had a population that stagnated and decreased.  Our kids left the state to get jobs.  That was not because Louisiana was not a great place to eat and live, and dance and sing, it’s a great place to live.  But it was corrupt at the top.  What we did was to clean out the corruption and have the toughest campaign laws in America.  We’ve had twenty years now of government that’s been good, better and best.  We’ve had Mike Foster.  We’ve had Kathleen Blanco.  We’ve had Bobby Jindal.  Clean, honest.  Louisiana hasn’t had twenty years like that in its history.  And you see things change.  There’s more hope.  There’s more jobs.  Kids don’t leave Louisiana for employment anymore.  Our net worth, our value, our incomes are going up.  So you have to defeat the corruption, and I think the lessons learned in Louisiana are applicable to the national government.

Lousiana is the microcosm, Washington D.C. is the macrocosm?

Exactly. That’s why I recognized it a year or so ago when I went to Washington.  I hadn’t really looked at it in ten or fifteen years.  I hadn’t been there in twenty years.   But I looked at it and said, man that looks a lot like Louisiana.  Your success depends not on what you know but on who you know.  And that’s corrupt.

Here it is, the China question.  You say we are stuck with a policy toward China that reflects economic conditions long gone, we need a level playing field.  Others say your policy would trigger a trade war with China that could break the world economy.  Can you explain how some of the changes you would make could benefit both America and China?

The Chinese could always make a decision to level the playing field.  After all they’re a communist nation, and one party, one man makes all the decisions.  He could decide that they don’t want to trade with America anymore.  We’re their largest customer.  They’re not going to make that decision.  They could, but I predict that they won’t.  What I want to ask them to do is to trade fairly.  To not send us products made by children.  To not send us products made by prisoners.  To not send us products made by forced labor.  To allow our products to go there.  To meet the standards that working people around the world have to meet.  They should meet them in China.  We will gain because our manufacturing jobs will increase.  We’ll quit letting these cheap goods come in made by children, and we’ll make them in America.  Maybe they cost a nickel more, but we’ll get jobs in America.  The Chinese will gain because the standards they’ll have to meet to get their products into our country will raise the living standards in China.  As far as I’m concerned we’re in a trade war right now.  We have surrendered.  We have said send us your crap and we’ll pay for it.  I’m going to say something different.  I’ll say send us your best products, made to our standards, and we’ll do some business.

One of your fair trade policies is to ban trading with partners who practice prisoner labor.  Does that mean we can’t trade with ourselves? You talk about the power of reform, how would you reform our prisons

We need fewer prisoners.  That means we need more jobs, which makes for less time to steal, cheat and hurt each other.  I’m a Methodist boy.  I think that people who do harm and damage need to go to prison.  I’d like to live in a society where there’s less harm and damage.  Where there’s more work and less welfare, and we treat people with pride and honor.  That’s why I spend my time on economic revitalization, and economic health.  I think a family without work is not happy, not healthy and not free.  Their chance of going to prison doubles and doubles again when they don’t have a decent job.  My time is going to be spent on changing the world by creating jobs, fair trade, an economy that’s growing, and campaign reform that gets the crooks out of Washington.  If we get the crooks out of Washington we’ll have fewer crooks in our prisons because there will be more jobs.

The war on drugs has filled our prisons and eroded our rights. Obama promised to respect the states, but the feds still enforce federal law, ignoring state laws.  What’s your stand on the war on drugs, and would you respect state laws?

I do respect state law, after all I was a governor.  I know that Louisiana is different from Idaho and should be allowed the right under our federal constitution to have different laws.  There are certain things that are the national government: military defense, relations with foreign governments, that’s all Washington D.C.  But things like the application of marijuana laws or the application of certain work standards, those sorts of things are under state purview.  I would honor that.  The war on drugs is an important war.  I’m not a believer as a father or grandfather that everything goes.  Drinking is legal but it’s voted on parish by parish, county by county, and we need to agree on those differences.  But even where drinking is legal there are age requirements, there are restrictions.  So the states need to run their state as long as they honor the federal constitution I will let them do that.

The War on Terror is terrifying in more ways than one.  The surveillance technology now available and the militarization of our police forces make many Americans fear for our liberties.  We all know the Ben Franklin quote about liberty and security.  Can we stay safe while preserving privacy?

We always have to work on that.  This is always going to be a struggle.  The government always has an excuse at the moment why they need to temporarily scrutinize us, review us, question us, fingerprint us.  I’m skeptical.  I’m a constitutional freedom loving person, and I think the Patriot Act goes too far.  I don’t think we need to give up a single right while we fight the war on terrorism.  Let me say it again.  We do not need to give up a single right to catch a terrorist, if we do the terrorists have won.

You’re a supporter of natural gas for cleaner more independent energy.  You say fracking technology needs to be improved.  Should there be a moratorium on fracking until we feel reasonably certain that we’re not poisoning water tables or causing earthquakes?

We have plenty of history on fracking. It can be done wisely and well, it can be environmentally sound.  I think we need to keep improving it.  There’s seventy years of experience with fracking in Louisiana and everybody’s drinking the water.  Any process can be dangerous.  All processes must be watched.  I’m an environmentalist.  I’m the governor who got the Sierra Club award for the state of Louisiana.  We cleaned up our air and water.  I believe in natural gas, I believe it’s energy for the next fifty years.  It’s plentiful and cheap.  I believe we have to break our addiction to foreign oil.  I would frack, I would do it below a certain depth.  I would have clear standards.  I would have penalties for those who violate them.  But we need to drill, we need to create jobs, we need to have an energy supply that is not controlled by Saudi Arabia.

Would you continue to spend federal money on radioactive waste disposal, which amounts to an enormous subsidy, or should the companies that own the nuclear plants be trusted with that?

There’s a third option.  I would open Yucca Mountain storage facility in Nevada.  We built it over twenty years ago.  It’s the best in the world.  It should be the repository for nuclear waste.  Nuclear energy generation is unsafe now because we’re storing the waste at each of these sites and these sites were not designed for five years, and ten years, fifteen years and twenty years of storage.  They’re overcrowded, they’re overburdened, they’re unsafe.  The government ought to collect this waste we process, the spent fuel, and sent the remainder to Yucca Mountain and store it safely.  France does it.  Frances has 85% of their electric energy produced by nuclear plants.  They use vitrification, which is a process I’m very familiar with.  It’s done safely and it’s stored in a storage facility that’s safe, earthquake proof and that can stand for a million years.  We already have that facility in this country, we just don’t have a president with an energy policy to make nuclear safe.  I will make it safe.  Vitrification is a glass process, it’s sand and glass, and it stands for a million years.  We know about it.  We would vitrify our spent fuel and store it in Yucca Mountain.  That’s what it was designed to do 29 years ago.  I voted on it on the floor of the United States Congress.

You support renewable energies.  You say you would cut all energy subsidies.  The Chinese are spending a trillion or more on solar and wind over the next five years.  Won’t they outpace us in the new energy economy if we stay dependent too long on our old energy standbys?

The market will beat them every time.  The government never made anything.  They can subsidize all they want.  We subsidized ethanol for 27 years.  For what?  I mean, what government ought to do is have education run locally, revise the tax code, have corporations pay seventeen percent, let there be no exceptions.  Have your highest tax rate at 17%, no exceptions, do away with double taxation, do away with alternative minimum taxes, do away with the marriage penalty.  Let’s make it simple, clean, non lobby-able.  Let’s get on with being in the marketplace.  Government does not pick winners among solar, geothermal, or wind.  The government cannot pick winners there.  It ought to get out of the business and let the market operate.

Regulation is such a blurry word.  We want clean air and clean water.  But our good intentions wind up smothering new businesses that can’t afford compliance officers, and we still don’t have clean air and water.  How would you find the balance between environmental protection and improved opportunities for small business?

I would have two kinds of regulations.  I would have regulations for companies with five hundred employees and more, and they would be tough and clear and fair.  I’d have a lot fewer regulations for companies under five hundred.  These are the companies that create jobs.  These are start up companies.  These are companies that don’t have lawyers, they don’t have a compliance officer, they don’t have a lobbyist in Washington.  These are companies that should be given more freedom.  They create jobs.  I would regulate them very lightly.  I would heavily regulate the major corporations, who have more lawyers than good sense.  They have twenty lobbyists in Washington, and have compliance officers everywhere.  I would hit them hard and fair.  That would give us balance.  We’d clean up the air and water with the big boys, and we’ll let the little guy create jobs.

What would you do about the revolving door of politicians and lobbyists, all those juicy jobs former regulators know they’re going to get?

I would prevent it.  I would have a seven-year requirement before a member of congress or a chief executive officer in government could lobby, and become a registered lobbyist in Washington.  Seven years.  The current rule is two years and it is not enforced.  I would change it.  Number two: I would not allow a lobbyist to bring a check to a politician.  Number three: I would not allow a senior executive or a former member of congress to lobby on behalf of a foreign country ever.  I would make those three changes the first day I was president.

America’s infrastructure is a joke, how can we afford to repair and modernize it?

We’re going to have to dedicate some money to the repair of our infrastructure.  It should be led by the states, but it should be supplemented by the federal government. We have federal taxes already on the books designed to do that.  Except that the federal tax is being used for other things.  I’ll invest in infrastructure.  I did it as governor, I’ll do it as president.  It will be a light touch, but it will be an early touch, use the taxes already in place.  I would cut the department of transportation by 3/4, by a hundred billion dollars, and I will take half that money saved, and I will spend it on infrastructure, without raising any new taxes.

My dad was a Marine and my big brother was a grunt, what can we do to help our veterans, so many of whom are homeless, and suffering post traumatic stress and other long lasting war wounds?

Well, we have a commitment.  We need to honor our commitment.  We need to decentralize our health care so it will be in more locations.  We need to make sure that we offer coverage of all damage done by war and half of that is mental, and mental instability.  So that does not need to be an unspoken rule.  That needs to be talked about, discussed, fully funded, and taken care of, it’s very straightforward.  You know the political warriors never want to talk about the full cost of war.  it’s time that we do that.  It’s also time that we be more careful in the wars we get into.  We’re took quick to decide.  And too slow helping those who get hurt.  To summarize, I see a need for a change in attitude.  Congress needs to vote on wars, not presidents. Number two: we need to support our troops while they fight and while they recover.  That needs to be a full commitment.

You seem to be the perfect candidate for Americans Elect. You were a Democrat for twenty years, and then a Republican for another twenty years.  The parties have veered to the left but mostly right while you pretty much stood fast.  Your campaign reforms of transparency and limits dovetail nicely with Americans Elect which is itself a campaign reform, a way of inviting the American people into the process 21st century style.  Do you think Americans Elect can challenge these billion dollar candidates? 

It remains to be seen.  It’s a question that doesn’t have an answer yet.  It won’t happen unless Americans Elect as a unity ticket really appeals to plain people.  Most Americans don’t give a penny to a presidential candidate.  The people that do are the elite, the well to do, and the special interests.  Americans Elect will not win if they appeal only to the elite, the well to do and the special interests.  They have to appeal to plain people to get them involved, so our candidacies are a natural fit.  I like unity.  I like rebuilding America.  I like small contributions.  But it remains to be seen whether Americans Elect can catch fire.  We’ll see.  I like what they stand for, but we’ll see if they catch fire.

Buddy Roemer at Occupy DC

Ever hear that joke, how do you start a fight on the Internet?

Express your opinion and wait.  What I like about you is you aren’t afraid to identity real problems and you have practical solutions for many of them.  But people wonder how you’ll get by the gridlock of the parties, and of the parties within the parties. The whole country seems to be paralyzed by emotional politics and culture war.  How will you go about refocusing the American people so cooperation becomes possible?  

It’s why I’m running this way.  I think you best serve by how you run.  I don’t think it works to run for political office in one manner, and then try to serve another.  It must be seamless.  So I run without PAC money, without Super PAC money, with no large checks.  That is the key to serving.  I will throw the lobbyists out of the room.  No lobbyist will be allowed to bring a check.  No lobbyist will be allowed to be on a fundraiser.  We’ll have plain people make these decisions.  For example, in health care reform, I’ve been a diabetic for forty years, I believe in health care reform.  Many Americans can’t afford to be sick.  But the way to get reform is not to get with the big boys who give the big money, that’s the insurance companies, that’s tort lawyers, that’s pharmaceuticals, no, they want to keep the system just like it is.  If you want change and you want reform you get doctors, nurses and patients in the room.  Plain people, and design a different system, a system of competition and choice in clinics and you will lower health care by twenty percent or more in the first year, and you’ll have a different America.  It’s true in bank reform, it’s true in tax reform.  I don’t want to be president and have a gridlocked nation, so I have run for office deliberately the most difficult way possible, with small contributions from a lot of people because that’s the way I will serve, and that’s the way congress will follow.  They’ll see the power in people, and they’ll see a president who will listen to them, play poker with them, watch football with them, have dinner with them, give them credit, they’ll see a whole different approach.  They’ll see an approach not giving republicans credit.  Republicans can’t run this country; they’ve proven that.  It’ll be an approach not giving democrats credit.  It will be an approach giving America credit.  That’s the way to rebuild the nation and that’s the way you break the gridlock.  Listen.  Act.  Include.  Give credit to others and good things will follow.

You’re teaching by example?

It’s the only way.  I mean, I wouldn’t run, who wants to be president?  Can you imagine being Obama?  What a sad situation.  No budget reform, no tax reform, no jobs reform, no immigration reform, nothing.  I don’t want to be nothing.  I want to the president of a society that has decided to correct its problems.  I want to be president of a country that decides to rebuild.

Who is your favorite president and why?

Of course, my favorite president, I didn’t know him, but I just think he’s the best president we ever had: Abraham Lincoln.  Abraham Lincoln ran for president with two words: one nation.  It was a real simple concept.  He said when you join you cannot leave.  Told them all that.  One nation.  Then when he ran for reelection he ran with four words: One nation no slaves.  He was the greatest president.  He gave us the nation.

Article written by Tamra Spivey

Newtopia staff writer TAMRA SPIVEY is a founding member and primary singer of Lucid Nation, executive producer of the documentary Rap is War and Exile Nation, and associate producer of The Gits documentary. She was art editor and west coast editor of Newtopia Magazine in its former incarnation, collaborating on in depth interviews with whistle blower Michael Ruppert, ACLU and record business honcho Danny Goldberg, and grassroots political strategist Larry Tramutola. Follow her on twitter @MongrelPatriot.

“Like all geniuses, he can be a pain in the arse, but it goes with the badge.”  Keith Richards

One of a handful of music producers who can rightfully be called legendary, Rob Fraboni was born to a musically inclined family in southern California where he started drumming for his first band when he was twelve years old.  Just a couple years later he hitchhiked to Hollywood where he got in the habit of sneaking in the backdoor at Gold Star Studios so he could observe sessions produced by the legendary Phil Spector.  In 1971 he moved to NYC to study under Al Grundy at the Institute for Audio Research.  Soon he was an assistant engineer at the Record Plant where his peers included the likes of Jack Douglas, Jay Messina, and Jimmy Iovine.  At the Record Planet Rob worked with John Lennon, Patti Labelle and the Bluebelles, Allen Ginsberg and Bob Dylan.

After moving back to Cali in 1972 Rob was hired to maintain the gear at The Village Recorder.  But his skills were quickly recognized and he was promoted to chief engineer.  He designed Studio B where he recorded his first hit record “Sail On, Sailor” by the Beach Boys.  He mixed half of their Holland record, then went to work on Goat’s Head Soup for the Rolling Stones, “You are so Beautiful” by Joe Cocker, and Planet Waves for Bob Dylan and the Band.  Dylan invited Rob to be his sound consultant for the Dylan/Band tour in 1974.  The following year, Rick Danko found a house built in 1958 in Malibu that Elvis had rented for a couple of years.  Mister Ed, the talking horse of black and white television fame had been stabled there off-season.  Dylan & The Band hired Rob to design and build a recording facility at the house that became the legendary Shangri-La Studios.  For ten years Rob was president and co-owner of Shangri-La where he worked on classic records by The Band, Eric Clapton, Wayne Shorter, and Bonnie Raitt, the album Green Light of which was nominated for a Grammy.

During that decade Rob was hired to produce the music for The Last Waltz, Martin Scorsese’s ground breaking documentary of the last show by The Band.  Rob faced some interesting challenges.  A buzz in keyboardist Garth Hudson’s tracks required the virtuoso to re-record all he had played.  It took three months for him to transcribe and replay what he had played in one night.  At the concert, which Rob attended as a guest of Eric Clapton, Rob found  the sound men arguing during his solo on “Further On Up The Road” and he noticed Eric’s guitar was too low in the mix so he jumped in and pushed it right up which got a rise out of the audience that you can see in the film. The Band and Scorsese asked him to handle the post- production of the film soundtrack and accompanying LP. Upon Scorsese’s suggestion, Rob innovated a new style of mixing for the film.  Watching the footage he would ride the volume of the instruments to reflect who was featured on the screen creating an impressionistic mix that added an engaging and unique quality to the soundtrack of the film, which was nominated for an Academy Award and the LP soundtrack was nominated for a Grammy.

In 1985 Rob moved back to NYC when Chris Blackwell hired him as vice president of Island Records.  He executive produced the record that introduced Melissa Etheridge to the world, signed Etta James to Island, and remastered the entire Bob Marley catalog.  Rob left Island just before it was sold to Polygram in 1990.

Since then through his record companies Domino Records, Ardeo Records and ISM Records he has released albums by Ivan Neville, Alvin Lee, John Mooney, Rusty Kershaw, Cowboy Mouth and many others.  In 1995 he produced the most rare outdoor recordings ever made of the Nyahbinghi sect with Keith Richards in Jamaica. The work featured membranophones played at Rastafarian groundation ceremonies, vocals and guitar, and was released on Keith’s Mindless Records label as The Wingless Angels.  In 1997 Rob produced Keith’s songs for Bridges to Babylon by The Rolling Stones, which was nominated for a Grammy.  Rob won a Grammy in 2002 for his production of Keith Richards’ song “You Win Again” on Timeless, the Hank Williams tribute album.  Most recently he’s been helping out Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros.

As the pirate they call Mr. Richards points out in his autobiography Rob Fraboni is a rare blend of talents.  He’s a superb technician; along with Shangri-La and Village Recorder’s Studio B, he designed and built Keith’s home studio in Connecticut, Room Called L.  But Rob is also a recording engineer with a rare understanding of the elusive process of making real music.  Real music, in case you’re wondering, is that stuff that so many music fans complain isn’t getting made anymore; real music is the kind that was made decades ago but still outsells most of what gets recorded now.  As Keith puts it: “His knowledge and his ability to record in the most unusual places are breathtaking.”

My guitarist and writing partner learned more about recording in one phone conversation with Rob than in all our years of studio and home recording.  As a singer I’ve always hated using headphones.  Rob liberated me from them, pointing out that the split second delay in hearing when a singer is in the room with the drummer creates an ease to the groove that the precision of instant snare drum in your ear loses.  Rob also explained to us why one well-placed mic on a drum kit can make a much better recording than the standard practice of a mic for each drum.  In essence, to mic each drum makes the mixer the drummer, when what is really needed is a recording of the drummer working the kit with all the harmonics of the room intact.  The fetish for precision, which led us to ProTools and sampled musicians, is one reason music is less exciting today.

Another reason is digital recording.  When my band was starting out, a mastering engineer by the name of Hank Waring was a good friend to us.  Hank was known for his hot masters, including “Born to be Wild” by Steppenwolf.  Hank worked with Bob Marley in the early days and was one of the first white men to visit Trenchtown; kids there would touch his skin, thinking he was covered with ashes and there must be black underneath.  He had a dust covered recording studio downstairs where he gave The Germs, X and other classic Los Angeles punk bands their start.  Hank told us his theory that digital was destroying music.  He said all his female employees got headaches from early digital recordings.  He explained that the unbroken flow of analog music is like streaming water, and compared digital information packets to a subliminal clickety clack of train tracks.

Rob has developed a process he calls RealFeel to restore the flow to digital recordings.  He was kind enough to demonstrate it at my kitchen table.  I noticed that digital CDs and radio made my friends ask me to “turn it down” because the music was interrupting conversation.  But once Rob applied RealFeel even louder volumes seemed to encourage communication, creating that talking by the campfire feeling that vinyl records give music.  Rob used deltoid muscle reflex testing to demonstrate how digital music weakens us.  No matter how hard we tried to keep our arms up we couldn’t; once RealFeel was applied we had no problem holding strong.  Left with sample CDs I tried them out on my musicians, friends and especially skeptics.  I would play the same song twice in a blind test.  Almost unanimously everyone chose the RealFeel recording though they couldn’t explain why.  My engineers studied the wav forms but couldn’t explain it.  Rob has been in talks with big potential partners like Apple and Amazon, and plans are in process to introduce this technology to everything from hearing aids and television to movie soundtracks.  Just imagine if Hank and Rob are right, we’ve been virtually imprisoned in the annoyance of digital sound for a couple decades now, what Neil Young has termed “The Dark Ages of Music”.

Rob explains more about his passion for the music in my interview below:

Were there any special sonic influences that influenced you as a child?

My parents owned a Grundig Majestic hi-fi and I immediately noticed a difference over the hi-fi’s at my friend’s parent’s homes. This sparked my inquisitiveness at the time and inspired me to start building small HeathKit amplifiers and eventually guitar amps when we started our band in 1963. That eventually led to me putting together a small studio in a guesthouse, recording our band, The NobleMen, and I just never stopped…

In August last year you spoke at a screening of “Last Waltz” in Minneapolis, did you hear anything new seeing it on the big screen 33 years after its release?

Mainly it was an interesting experience because I had transferred my original VHS master of the film to DVD myself and compared it to the digitally remastered 5.1 surround mix that was later released, finding that I much preferred the original mix because as you pointed out, the mix was made to match what was on the screen and the new mix didn’t use that technique. It was immediately apparent to the entire audience in the theatre when we A/B’d the two and the crowd preferred the original mix so that was the one we screened. I had also applied RealFeel technology that gave the mix the analog feeling of the original release of the movie in 1978.

You’ve had a rare view of the music industry, from the days when it is was rapidly growing and innovating, and a young gun such as yourself could find himself swept up to the heights of audio stardom, to the ruin it is today, with sales plummeting in flurries of pink slips as corporate conglomerates gobble up all the independents.  Did you see this coming or did it take you by surprise?  Do think there is hope for the music industry or do you think the golden days are in the past?

I feel that the whole process has been gradual and insidious. This has been due to many factors from the advent of multi-track recording and the use of individual microphones on each instrument to the advent of digital recording. I watched a documentary on Bluegrass music years ago called “A High Lonesome Sound” and in it they showed chronologically the evolution of “The Grand Old Opry” and it was astounding to see it go from one microphone to 20+ microphones over a 20 year period and the sound went from having great depth and dimension in mono to a very small sounding stereo soundstage. That was eye opening but at that point, not a surprise. With the advent of digital sound it was more of a surprise because at first it seemed so accurate and noise free but as one continued to listen, it was apparent that there was something truly lacking in the emotional content. It was very hard to put your finger on though and it took time to really understand what was happening. I feel that digital recording is still in it’s infancy in a sense and what we are using now will ultimately be replaced by a system that will not sacrifice emotion for the sake of convenience. I know in my heart there is hope.

To my ears great records like Exile on Main Street which may not have been perfectly clear analog but blended into a beautiful sonic stew are far less pleasing when parsed out into their individual details in their new digitally mastered forms.  Do you think the lust for precision has helped or hindered the creation of music?

That’s an interesting description: “The lust for precision”, because it’s very true. Digital is mathematically accurate but as I said above, sacrifices emotion in the quest for accuracy and convenience. It definitely hinders the production of music because the sound is fatiguing and you find yourself engaged in a fight between your left and right brain hemispheres. One has to work harder to achieve the same results, not to mention the temptation to over-perfect things and lose precious spontaneity.

You once told me how you and some famous musician friends used to get together weekly to each share your favorite albums, and how CDs seemed to take the life out of that communal pleasure.  Can you share that story, please, as it’s one of the “aha” moments that led to your RealFeel project.

I had an apartment in Los Angeles that had a very large living room with a 25 foot ceiling. I had a nice pair of Tannoy Golds in there with Belvedere cabinets, kind of the cream of the crop and the room sounded really nice. I had 6,000 vinyl records and it was a music lover’s paradise and became an attractive place for my musician, engineer and producer friends to spend many hours there listening to music. Everyone from Glen Frey, Don Felder, Mick Fleetwood, Bonnie Raitt, Steve Tyler, and Joe Perry, to Eric Clapton would drop by. We would all be sitting with a few albums in our laps waiting our turn to play the songs we had picked. This would go on continuously for as long as eight hours a night, a couple nights a week. We did this for years between 1975 and 1984. Then something strange happened. CDs came on the scene and suddenly we found ourselves losing interest in our long listening sessions. It got to the point after about six months where we all lost interest in our intense listening parties. But it happened gradually over that six months or so and we didn’t really understand what was happening.

RealFeel fascinates me because sound is such an intrinsic part of human life, and if it’s true that digital sound is subliminally irritating to the brain, and detrimental to our biology, then it’s one of the most horrible environmental pollutants we are immersed in.  One we hear almost nothing about. Can you tell us a little about the reactions you’ve been getting when you demonstrate RealFeel to heavy hitters at the big companies who are considering implementing your technology?

Honestly, at first there’s a bit of resistance and disbelief because as the name implies, it’s about feel more than sound. And there is a lack of awareness in general as to what’s really happening to the listener. Digital sound has the identical effect on the human body as fluorescent lighting. I find that musicians are much more sensitive to this, which stands to reason, and are quite ready to embrace it. But like anything new and different, there’s a certain resistance. Once one notices the difference and really feels the difference, it becomes hard to go back and becomes more and more apparent. It’s a universally accepted fact at this point that there is something “not quite right” about digital sound and it’s the subject of discussion by producers and engineers the world over. And one sees the consumers starting to pick up on this as witnessed by the renewed interest in vinyl records that’s growing at a surprising rate. One thing I hear frequently is that ‘no one cares, especially the “youth”. In my experience I have found that not to be true. It’s a question of education and awareness and the whole process is starting to pick up steam. One can find numerous articles in print and on the Internet on the subject at this point. And when you stop and consider the implications, it affects many areas of our lives, from cell phones to hearing aids, CDs, video games, DVDs, radio and television and movie theaters as well. And I haven’t even touched on mp3s which is sound at it’s chintziest.

You’ve seen American society drift and twist through the protests of the 70′s through the punk rock revolution and the yuppie devolution all the way up to our current predicament.  What do you think of Occupy Wall Street and the current political climate of the United States?  Does it seem different to you or just more of the same?

This is a very important and pressing issue that could easily be the subject of an entire article. People are being deceived. It’s deep and controversial. We’re in a pressure cooker. Something’s got to give. There is a tremendous lack of respect for the planet and all life upon it, plant and animal and human. Infinite growth is a fallacy.

You’ve spoken about how improvisational and immediate Bob Dylan’s inspiration would be, and how there would be little conversation, he would play and The Band would jump in.  I get the impression there was a sort of silent conversation going on between the maestro, his musicians and you.  Was it exciting to be part of a process so different from the usual engineer behind the glass with a rehearsed band?

It was an extraordinary experience. At that point in my career I was 22 and had been making records for seven years. I had never made a record where everything was performed live in the studio especially the lead vocals that were to be the final and only vocals. Believe it or not, at that point in Bob’s career he had NEVER overdubbed a lead vocal on any of his records. In fact the first record that he did where he overdubbed some of the lead vocals was the record he made with Jerry Wexler, Slow Train Coming. It was a little scary actually to think there was no room for error on my part. Bob and The Band were rehearsing for “Tour ’74″ out in Malibu and they had only rehearsed three of the songs that ended up on Planet Waves. The rest of the songs were done spontaneously with The Band watching Bob hands on the guitar to know the changes. Typically they would play a song once and the next take or maybe two would end up being the final version. I was amazed by their ability to pull this off.  I’m sure what made this possible was the fact they had performed so many shows together and knew each other quite instinctively. That, plus the fact they were so incredibly talented.

Shangri-La was was put up for sale last year for a little over four million and sold for about two million, quite a bargain considering the gear, its history, and its location across from Zuma Beach.  I know the design was tweaked by the last owner, but does the studio still reflect your vision?  Do you know if it will continue to function as one of the last of the great analog recording studios?

Actually I was there about 18 months ago and it had changed very little from the original design. Beej Chaney was still the owner at that time. The thinking that went into the design of Shangri-La was to retain the feeling of a house and not to overdo the acoustic treatment. Some of the equipment had been changed but the layout and rooms were still as they were originally though they had of course been refurbished with time. The only architectural change was the opening of a rear window in the control room that we had covered. It did still have an analog multi-track but of course, ProTools had been installed as well. I tried to reach Beej just before the studio was sold, as Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros were interested in using it and I had heard he had sold the gear separately from the real estate.  I am not sure about its future as a studio.

Since almost every musician today is forced to be an engineer and producer, a predicament that reminds me of the old adage that only a fool has himself for a lawyer, what are the three best pieces of advice you can provide for recording today?

1. As an artist, be the artist and get at least one person to help. To really do yourself justice as a performer you need to be in your right (creative) brain. If one tries to engineer your own record you’ll find yourself constantly going back and forth between left and right brain. The technical side of engineering is initially left-brain. Get an engineer or at least a friend you can have assist you with these things while you’re performing. If you’re having to play everything yourself you’ll especially want someone to help you so you can be objective.

2. Have your studio setup done in advance and avoid confusion, the enemy of creativity. Keep it simple. This goes for your recording setup and your song arrangements. It’s easier to add than to take away. I find it preferable to use as few mics as possible and to carefully consider their placement. Generally speaking, further is better than closer.

3. Do your pre-production. Have a basic arrangement to build on and you’ll be able to have some spontaneity when it comes time to start recording. This will also help avoid the tendency to prop up a weak arrangement by overdubbing things to try to strengthen the song. You’ll find that the better your arrangement is, the better it will sound, too. Avoid doing too many takes in one sitting. If you’re not feeling it after a couple of takes, move on to another song and come back to the first one fresh, a little later. It’s much better to stick to one or two songs at a time and finish the recording of one song at a time, rather than cutting a number of rhythm tracks and having them all getting intermingled in your head. This helps keep more variety between songs.

Article written by Tamra Spivey

Newtopia staff writer TAMRA SPIVEY is a founding member and primary singer of Lucid Nation, executive producer of the documentary Rap is War and Exile Nation, and associate producer of The Gits documentary. She was art editor and west coast editor of Newtopia Magazine in its former incarnation, collaborating on in depth interviews with whistle blower Michael Ruppert, ACLU and record business honcho Danny Goldberg, and grassroots political strategist Larry Tramutola. Follow her on twitter @MongrelPatriot.

Queen to Play, 2011 (French)
Writer/Director — Caroline Bottaro
Actors — Sandrine Bonnaire as Helene, Kevin Kline as Kroger

Cinemashrink says:

If you’re afraid to make a commitment to what gives you pleasure
See Queen to Play and feel inspired to get in the game
Because if you don’t risk, you lose – and for sure, you can’t win.

Let the unexpected reign.  I love a story in which an ordinary person living an ordinary life comes upon an irresistible urge.  Against all odds, such a person plunges forward.  In the face of setbacks, they persist.   Following an invisible line of knowing not-knowing, they work hard.  They pick their way along a vein of dormant desire long ago left aside for practical reasons.  In Queen to Play, more delightfully called Joyeus in French which is the feminine form for player, a forty-ish cleaning woman making a bed in a hotel room can’t take her eyes off a couple on the balcony.  They’re playing chess.  Even after the woman wins, they continue laughing and loving.  The woman stands up, moves away from the table to stand at the railing.  The man follows, attentive and affectionate.  A subtle expression of surprise passes Helene’s eyes. Such a reaction goes against her expectation.  The two women exchange looks as if each knows what the other is thinking. How can a woman winning a game against her man enhance her attractiveness, spur greater pleasure and intimacy?  It’s a notable moment for Helene.  She buys a chess set and gives it to her husband as a gift.

So much said in such a small gesture.  Helene wants to feel beautiful, smart and well loved all in one swoop.  She longs to open a closed door of passion.  Her husband, however, simply shrugs his shoulders.  Chess holds no interest for him.  Helene is left on her own to discover where the desire will take her.  Never before has she been challenged to go beyond being a wife and mother, beyond being married.   What will it mean to follow the desire? Natural next phases of a life are often triggered by a moment of intense emotion.  It’s time for Helene to learn more about herself.

In a move quite out of character for her, she asks a reclusive ex-pat, Dr. Kroger, for whom she cleans house to teach her to play.  Kroger reluctantly agrees and slowly gets drawn into her determined effort.  First she surprises him by having a knack for chess.  Then she surprises him by beating him.  Then the relationship falters, shifts, starts, stalls and withstands reversals.  He makes mistakes.  He’s had a bad experience failing his deceased wife in her creative efforts to be a painter.  Helene withdraws.  She’s hurt by his apparent duplicity, admiring her in private and dismissing her as a cleaning woman in a letter of recommendation to play in a public tournament.  She has to insist, demand his respect.  That’s another step out of character for her.

He makes her accountable for her own gift.  As he reveals himself to her, he ventures, “No one can save another person.”  But then he goes on, telling her, “You have something that can’t be taught, not by another person, not in a class, not in a school.” She requires a partner to make the discovery of her passion but her gift is not contained, limited or defined by partnership.

As she goes public with her chess playing, Helene begins to shine.  She wins tournaments, triumphs over the best local players and gains an opportunity to leave Corsica and go to Paris.  Not surprisingly, her opportunities threaten to dim her marriage.  It takes time, takes her out of the house and takes her on her own path where she feels the conflict.  She’s a woman bound to the tradition of marriage and loves her husband.  For Helene, longtime wife and mother to a teenager, finding her gift as a master chess player is a little like discovering the queen is the strongest piece on a chessboard.  It upsets belief.

Helene’s relationship with Kroger, intensely erotic if not sexual, rouses her to a level of intimacy in which she feels equal.  She plays a determining role in what happens between them as well as on the board.  Intimacy where man and woman respect one another opens an unexpected sense of doing right by the other, challenging stereotypical scenarios.  We find ourselves being treated to a view of individual uniqueness that enhances rather that destroys the beauty of a situation.

As Helene steps forward as a first rate chess player, she draws upon the erotic energy of play with Kroger but she falls more in love with her husband than before.   She transforms her life and her marriage.  Helene’s awakening into full-blown womanhood becomes more than a delicious marshmallow for immediate consumption.  She releases Kroger from his guilt and then lifts her marriage as well as her life onto another level.  To see a new woman emerge from a game as old as chess…well, it’s a beautiful thing to watch.

Article written by Dr. Jane Alexander Stewart

Newtopia staff writer Jane Alexander Stewart, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist in Los Angeles who writes essays about mythic themes in film, creates “Myth in Film; Myth in Your Life” seminars for self-exploration and travels a lot. Her film reviews have been published in the San Francisco C.G. Jung Library Journal, Spring: A Journal of Archetype and Culture and Los Angeles Journal of Psychological Perspectives.  Jane’s popular essay on “The Feminine Hero in The Silence of the Lambs” appears in the anthology, The Soul of Popular Culture, and in The Presence of the Feminine in Film as one of its authors. She’s also presented myth in film programs at Los Angeles County Museum, University of Alabama and C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich. A collection of her reviews and other writing can be found at www.CinemaShrink.com.