A lot of good energy was directed to other pursuits for a few days. Our intentional Community, Odonata, offered it’s first evening in the Sacred Music Series, concerts with musicians whose art is devoted to the spirit through music. Sitartist David Pontbriand and tabla player Amos Libby entertained some sixty people at the Yoga Center of Newburyport, an inspired evening which took all in and sent them home with good grace.

The boys are taking numbers
to stand in line again
born with an open hand
which of them will be men today
and draw a card that wins?

They’re looking for a future
looking for their rising star
to shine above the fields
a voice shouts from the doorway
“C’mon in, boy, you’re hired.”

They say that in my country
when the market’s weak there’s war
and our coin is thin, my friend
dig a grave for the bravest ones
in endless waves of sand

The beauty of the subtropics – as I experienced them for years in Brazil, and on other journeys far and away…

… and now I understand that I was making a home of the Earth, not a home of 

- Spencer, New York, where I was born at the foot of a minor tree-crowned mountain; 
- or Ironwood, Michigan, where the winter snows drifted to the eaves of our house; 
- or friendly Saint Paul, Minnesota, whose lakes were diamonds in the summer sun; 
- or tiny Souris, North Dakota, an islet adrift in a sea of green; 
- or jazzy Chicago, Illinois, its colors and its black and its white; 
- or halus Yogayakarta, Java, its ancient gods and modern desires; 
- or Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, where my adulthood was born; 
- or Boston or Byfield, Massachusetts, where my affluence came and went; 
- or Auroville, Tamil Nadu, whose galaxy of energies called as if by gravity…

A litany of grounds that received my footprint, but were places on a larger map, one with fewer constraints on patterns of thought, and which tries to cover a globe of human understanding, human reaching, and human almost-attaining…

There’s a song for the water of sorrow
and a song for the fire of pain
a song for the love that you’ll meet tomorrow
and one for the touch of skin
    ah, life gives us songs to sing

Can you count how many times
you’ve held pleasure in your hands?
Open your fingers in the evening light
watch the water disappear in the sand

A breath is a wave you can drown in
it can whisper you out to sea
rock you up and down in its arms
like a mother sings her baby to sleep
    ah, life is a song to sing

I expect that, having passed my bedtime by several hours now, I am exempt from morning yoga. There are some things you really must not allow to be pushed, though – the least effort is spent maintaining a ritual, then the ritual helps maintain everything else (such as reasonable sleeping hours and subsequent mental and physical health…).

However, having played one of the songs written in Auroville for Aurelio and Charles, and having unfortunately missed doing the same for Bhavana, who really deserved to be in on the farewell recital, I promised to record it and send it along. So, in retrospect… what amounted to a fairly quick recording session, rocky start to weary finish, using Garage Band on the Mac, several takes, several tweaks and some technical wiggling got it all up on the web and mailed off to friends abroad.

Arrival follows departure and, unless you work tirelessly to avoid them, solitary travel invariably collects companions. One week at Verité Community in Auroville was in depth and breadth closer to a month, or months; so, since departure follows arrival, this leave-taking was sweeter and more heart-tugging than I would have expected from a visit of days. Imagine the hidden places our love lives, when we say goodbye to affections we nurtured for years?

The experience of the sitar performance was moving – to close your eyes in that resounding space and hear the passage of melody and the underlying drone beneath, as though, like any music, you were being carried along on a river of sound. It is a great protective space, music masterfully played, even if the mastery should be of human feeling and not technical proficiency with an instrument.

In this case it was both. What played in the heart, however, also played in the mind, and it was fascinating to look into the grammar of this musical language. It has phrases which do not begin or end as our western phrases do, with strikes and strums which are unpredictably and beautifully placed. The flow of sound seemed intellectual, seemed to wind around from heart to mind to hands, but was at the same time anti-intellect: and the interjection of deep tones or calls of the resonant strings followed a sensibility completely consistent with place and culture… highly controlled with how many generations of artistic development behind it, yet in some way unchained. Beautiful.

Every night at the ashram, after an evening chant and before dinner, there are fifteen minutes of music. And every night, after dinner, one or two hours. The musicians play as a devotion, an offering to the sanctuary and to those who come here as their church.

The sanctuary is rather large; the floor is granite, the walls stone, and the ceiling vaulted; there are no chairs, those who come to worship or participate or attend sit on the floor or against the walls. Everyone is silent, but you feel them there – imagine the full emptiness of orchestra hall – and then the single instrument begins to play. The sound of a sitar was made for this type of hall; the musician is a master, and we follow his movements, both physical and musical, from a distance of 10 feet. A sitar has resonance strings and body, and sometimes a gourd attached to carry the vibrations further or longer. In this room they were not needed, and the voice sounded and resounded around the hall. An echoing silence followed each pause and each break. Astounding fortune, yet another call for gratitude, to be witness to both the grace and simplicity of this spiritual community, and the arts which are inspired by their master, Ramana Maharshi.