Listening to Stuart Davis Live

March 3rd, 2007
After having dinner with Stuart Davis, we all headed to the Tractor Tavern and got great front row seats for the show. The crowd was not huge, about 70 people I would estimate, but the Tractor is not a very large club so it did not feel empty.

Stuart performed solo with just his acoustic guitar for accompaniment. He started right off with a version of Good Wyrd from his ?What album. Stu is able to produce a very full sound for a solo performer. He has a strong vocal style and an intimate mastery of his guitar. He even managed to use the stage like a kick drum adding a thumping bass to many of his songs.

Stuart’s sense of humor was on good display. After the first song he joked that we had just heard the only song he had written. He was very proud of it, but now he realized that a concert really should include more than just one song, no matter how good it was. Later after singing a song, he said that he had written us a new song while performing the previous one. Now that is talent!

Davis played lots of tunes from his new album, but he also played older songs and asked the audience to call out requests. From the number of suggestions shouted out it was obvious that the crowd was very familiar with his work. Stuart is a charismatic performer and he has an easy going yet fearless manner which really helps him to connect with his audience. And his engaging blend of irreverent humor and spiritual depth makes him a unique artist.

There was a fashion show going on just down the street from the club, so Stuart had great fun trying to convince the entire audience to strip naked and crash the fashion show with him right after the gig. He claimed that David Bowie would want us to do it, and he sang a few bars of Bowie’s Fashion to motivate us.

Earlier at dinner, I had complained to Stuart that I had still never heard a full version of his song, Ladder from his Self Titled 2003 album. I had only heard portions of the song on the Kosmos CDs by Ken Wilber. I have tried to purchase the album from Stuart twice but received the new ?What album by mistake. So I was pleased and honored when Stuart closed the show by playing Ladder for us. It is a great song about evolution and spiritual development. “The higher that we climb, the more the ladder sways. There is more to evolution than a little DNA.”

After the show Davis sold CDs and took time to talk with everyone who waited in line to see him. He remembered many of the fans and there were lots of hugs going around.

Stuart Davis is an interesting and talented musician and an engaging performer. After enjoying his studio work it was thrilling to see him perform live in such an intimate setting. If you ever have a chance to see Stuart Davis live, do it!

Thanks Stuart for a great show and a memorable evening. Love and hugs.

Hanging Out with Stuart Davis

March 3rd was a memorable evening for a lucky group of people in Seattle, me and my wife included. We got to hang out with musician and artist Stuart Davis before his show at the Tractor Tavern.

I discovered Stuart through his work at Integral Institute, especially Integral Naked. As I was eagerly awaiting his Seattle appearance I discovered that there is a local group of Integral fans, Seattle Integral, and that several of them were planning on getting together for dinner before the show. So I told my wife, Evelyn, that we should drop by the Tai restaurant and see if we could figure out which table was the Integral table. Unfortunately, I had never met anyone from the group and had only found one picture online of one of the members named Gary Stamper. As luck would have it, there was Gary looking just like his picture, sitting right by the window.

Evelyn and I introduced ourselves and started talking with the great folks from Seattle Integral (all of whose names I do not remember) when this very tall young man came in and started giving hugs all around the table. It was none other than Stuart Davis, the man we had all come to see that evening. Stu sat down next to me and we talked and ate dinner together.

Stuart talked about a movie project he is working on. Evelyn and I gave him advice on parenting two girls, something we have in common. We talked about music, film, art, kids, relationships, Mormonism, Ken Wilber and lots more. I found him to be as intelligent, funny and articulate in person as he is in his work. Everyone at the table had a fantastic time, including Stuart.

Stuart left after another round of hugs to go do his pre-show sound check, and we all settled up our bill and walked down the street to the Tractor Tavern for the show. See the next post for details of the show. After the show most of us got together with Stuart at a nearby bar and shared some more stories before the evening came to a close.

A good time was had by all and I look forward to getting together with the Seattle Integral gang again in the near future. I’m also looking forward to a new live CD Stuart recently recorded and any other new work he blesses us with. Sometimes it pays off when you just barge in and introduce yourself to strangers.

Thanks Stuart for being such an open and sharing guy! We hope to see you in Seattle again as soon as possible.

In Like a Lion

We have been getting more snow in Western Washington. This has been a wild winter already, and we have all been looking forward to spring. Suddenly the Equinox looks far away...
I told my daughter, Chani, that March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. But she says that this March is way too white and fluffy to be a lion, so it must be coming in like a lamb. I hope not, because that means the month might go out like a lion.

Here is a classic haiku about snow and much more:

Just being here,
I am here,
And the snow falls.
--- Issa

Monkeys in Space

Sometimes I get nostalgic
For futures that died in the past
Strap on your jet pack
Grab your favorite monkey
And ride that rocket to the moon

What Do We Know?

Who am I?
Who are we?
Who asks the questions?
Who has these thoughts?
Who feels these emotions?
Who is aware of sensations?
Who is aware of this awareness?

Why are these questions so much more satisfying than the so called answers?

What do we know?

I AM in this moment what I AM

Next question?

Cleaning Mirrors, Finding Windows

I want to climb higher but
I keep missing the ladder
Blinded by the inner light
Falling into Freudian basements
Filled with Jungian archetypes

But congested cognitive maps
Tangled with twisted developmental lines
Just add to the confusion of my
Moral, interpersonal, emotional,
Psychosexuality, know what I mean?

The whole parts of my holons
Contest the content of my consciousness
Leaving an empty space
In which all phenomena arise
Butterfly dreams and lazy candle flames

Spiraling around the value core
I desperately want to survive this magic
This impulsive, purposeful achievement
I want to commune with the starry net
That holds the world within the heavens

But I have to take my ox to the marketplace
Afterwards, maybe we can get together for a time
Over tea at that little café near the traffic circle
You can always get a window seat
And I will join you there

Oscar Night Review

Sunday was Oscar night. The red carpet was rolled out. All the pretty starlings were wearing their designer dresses. All the networks were there, cameras flashing, video rolling. So I think I should give you the Thunder Echo Review of Oscar Night 2007.

I didn’t watch the Oscars.
I watched Anna & the King, which I believe won an Oscar once upon a time, with my family. It was a great movie. And my youngest got some idea of why her teachers told her she reminds them of Jody Foster. She is a strong-willed girl with a lot of brains and a huge heart. Chani gets my nomination for best 6th Grader in a starring role.

I heard on the news this morning that Little Miss Sunshine got an award. I saw that movie and thought it was hilarious. I thought it was a great view into dysfunctional American families. So I’m cool with that one.

I heard that An Inconvenient Truth won Best Documentary. I own a copy on DVD and I have read the book. It was a well produced documentary about a topic that should be a no-brainer for anyone who has been paying attention for the last 30 years. But I keep forgetting that people don’t pay attention. I’ll have to pay more attention to that.

Other than that, I’m not too interested in the Oscars.

Boogie with Stu

I have advance tickets to see Stuart Davis live at the Tractor Tavern in Seattle next Saturday, March 3rd.
Stuart Davis is one of the most interesting musical artists I have been exposed to in years. And he has strong connections to Ken Wilber and the Integral Institute. I will be sure to give a review after the show. But if you are in the Seattle area and love quirky well played pop music with real depth, then get your arse to the show this Saturday.

Thunder Echo Ensemble – WTF?

A guy at work asked me the other day, “Thunder Echo Ensemble, what the f@#% is that?” I was wearing a TEE Shirt with the cover of the new CD on it.
(The new Thunder Echo Ensemble CD, Just Now, is available FREE by the way, so go download it.)
So I said, “Thunder Echo is a band that I am in.”
That was a good enough answer for this particular guy, but I knew that it went much deeper than that. So here is my attempt to answer that question in a more genuine way (even though you didn’t ask).

As a young man and a young artist I tried really hard to be original. But I found that my artwork was always directly or indirectly derivative. And the more I studied other artists’ work the more I realized that nobody was doing original work, nobody. That got me interested in collage and other methods of directly exploring how artists create new combinations of elements instead of creating new elements.

Take the cover of the new CD for example. Now this illustration would traditionally be called an original work of art. I sat down with a blank canvas and drew things on it. But as the artist I can tell you that there is very little originality in this piece. I have been exposed to a wide variety of art and artistic techniques in the past. I have looked at thousands of paintings and thousands of comics. I did not invent the concepts of Eskimos or shamans or ceremonial masks. I took all these things and put them together at a specific time and place. And the results are rather pleasing (if I do say so myself). It is a drawing. It is art. And that is okay. But it is not original (Everybody is a critic).

I also do a lot of visual collage work, where I literally take other peoples’ images, cut them up and reconstruct them into new configurations. And I think collage is just as legitimate as that CD cover illustration. It is just a little easier for others to see and trace the influences and components of a collage.

When I make music I do the same thing. I collect influences and actual bits of music created by others. I use computer programs to help me sequence these bits into interesting new configurations. I add a few bits of my own: vocals, keyboard parts, etc.. I am basically a musical collage artist as well.

So when I wanted to share my music with other people I did not think it was entirely fair to say, this is my Original Music. I feel there are very few lightning flashes of true originality in music (or anything else). Most of us are lucky if we can get close to the thunder from those flashes once in a while. And with my musical talent (or lack there of), I figured I was lucky if I could capture a few distant echoes of the thunder. That is how I came up with the name, Thunder Echo. I thought about calling it the Thunder Echo Assembly, because of the collage aspect, but I settle on the Thunder Echo Ensemble because it sounds more musical.

That is my theory and why I call my music and my blog Thunder Echo. And you can take that, chop it up and rearrange it if you can manage to create something interesting out of it.

Snap! Crackle! Pop Music!

Mike Sits Sipping Coffee

A Poem:
Mike Sits Sipping Coffee

Have you written a poem today?
I ask him what topic I should
Riff and ramble and rant about
But he says I am the poet
I should decide
Then he asks if I know
The emperor of ice cream
Because I should have written it
Instead of Wallace Stevens
Because I say shit that makes no sense
Like “let the lamp affix its beam”
As he crumples his Cliff Bar wrapper
And casts it away, cold and dumb
Mike becomes the prince of nondairy creamer

Jay Birds Want to be FREE

Here’s a funny story. The local Seattle news, King 5, reported over the weekend that people all over Western Washington were scared and concerned about a mysterious white powder that was found on people’s cars and homes. Was it anthrax? Did terrorist fly a plane over the Puget Sound and distribute some horrible bio-weapon? Well King 5 paid a lab to analyze the mysterious substance and it turned out to be tree pollen. Pollen from pine trees.

Everyone is so worried about security these days. National Security, Homeland Security, Security Systems, Airport Security, Port Security, Social Security. Now we are even afraid of trees. TREES. Do we need a Department of Tree Security?

Let me clue everyone into a little secret: There is no such thing as security. Nothing is secure. No place, no person, no thing, no process can ever be secure.

When I think about it, I am pretty sure I don’t want security any way. A secure world would be very prison like. I want Freedom. Freedom to think. Freedom to act. Freedom to try things. Freedom to make mistakes. Freedom to learn from them. Freedom to pursue happiness.

Now I am not entirely sure that freedom actually exists either. But I would rather spend my life chasing Freedom than locking myself away in fear trying to find Security.

I was trying to keep two blogs going. Thunder Echo was all about art, music, poetry. And Black & Blue Heart was about politics and society. Well I have decided that those self imposed boxes were an attempt at security. I was trying to keep my art clean and my politics away from the people I work with. But I am going to throw those distinctions away in the name of Freedom.

From now on, I am going to post what ever I want about any topic on this blog, Thunder Echo. There will still be art, poetry and music. But there will also be politics and society and philosophy. It may get messy, but it will be free. And Jay Birds want to be Free!

Tastes like Wombat

Polar orbit moon shot
In the dog house with Woodstock
These doors are immense
But we can’t get through

Millennial snob haircuts
Queen Victoria’s a big slut
These windows are opportune
But we can’t get through

Peaking too soon
Some generations go boom
These walls don’t exist
But we can’t get through

Our special this evening
Is a well braised rabbit
On a bed of mixed metaphors
But let us prove our hue

Canal

I can still remember
Stumbling in the dark
Scraping my shin
Against the rusty pipes
As we followed water sounds
Until we reached the river

There is no scar now
Where we washed away
Dark blood that flowed
Into a darker night
Stars jumped in the current
While we sat still and calm

The mark that remains
Is the memory of the ground
How it crawled and flowed
As the sun put an end to night
Revealing a fragile swarm
Of a thousand baby frogs

Our footsteps were clear
Marked by broken bodies
In the dust by the canal

Mosquitoes in the Net

My Instamatic Obscura
Plays catch and release
With colors grey and fey
You must be an artist
To sport a haircut like that
But I know what I like
Mixtapes growl and hiss
But I know what I like
Lo-Fidelity cannot hide
Sequencing gray and fay
You must be an artist
To play catch and release
In front of the camera like that

Mosquitoes in the net again

Cold Comfort Crow

Obsidian black
Screeching like glacial ice
The crow

Crying like a koan
Talons pick at scabs
I didn’t know I had

Which is more tragic?
The constricting squeeze
Of certain answers
Or the black spaces
Of a question mark?

My heart flutters
Like dark wings
Rising from carrion

Which is more tragic?
The crow?
Or me?