I. Beringia
Beringia was named for the intermediary land mass of two continents. Located between Siberia and Alaska, it was an old/new bridge land separated during the Ice Age, for the Bering Strait had parted as one. The first, second and third major migrations of Asian-European people crossed into North America on the Bering Land Bridge, founding a paleo-population on the unpopulated, foreign continent of North America.
In one sense, it was no man's land: harsh, barren, cold, wasteland. Even if the ocean's waters fell with the ice creating a land bridge, it was incredibly daunting for migrants to cross on the land bridge risen from the sea. Paleo-creatures accompanied the migrants: sabertooth cats and wooly mammoths. Their skeletal remains were unearthed at the Clovis archaeological site in New Mexico many centuries later.
When temperatures warmed, the oceans rose, covering the land bridge which disallowed pilgrimage by foot across the Pacific Rim. Vitus Bering, a Russian explorer, discovered the waterway of Beringia in search of the Northwest Passage from East to West.
II. On the Land Bridge
"On the Land Bridge" was a poetic reconstruction of the events of the Ice Age, which created much of the Earth's geography known today. The "ice blocks," "ice sheets" and "ice floes" "carved," "numbed" and "thawed" the crust of the planet. Mountain ranges, basins, glaciers, sea passages and geological strata of the land were its effects.
Surprisingly, instead of writing lyrics for the open verbal passages (where a chorus would exist) I preferred to sing the chorus without consonants, only vowel sounds with no mental conjectures or conceptions. I enjoyed wafting and humming along to the chords. My mind was not unlike "the Gate was open then closed."
III. Wave-Swept, Wind Blown
Besides wave and wind, the subject of the next song was the inter-tidal zone between low tide and high tide. Pacific Northwest tribes found in the tide the most efficient way to harvest the bounty of the sea. Mussels, crabs, kelp, even urchins with spines, were plentful. In some ways, it was better than a fishing expedition on the open sea for halibut.
The Haida of southern Vancouver Island and the Tlingit of the archipelagos of southwestern Britich Columbia and Alaska were examples of the maritime tribes. Their allegiance to the sea was demonstrated in cultural artifacts and sacred totem ceremonies.
Both tides covered the wave-swept, the anemones and abalones, whereas the low tide allowed for the upper nautical species to spend time out the waves in the wind, "the mussel bed" and "crab beachhead." The intertidal zone was available for the plentiful gathering of both low and high tide. It was the bounty of the sea without deep water to intervene.
IV. Gone the Swan
The tudra swan was the dominant, migrating swan of the arctic. They circled back to the tundra in winter to lay thir eggs before flying forth in the spring to the warm inner-continental states to recover and feed amply, an epic in itself. They trailed back along the west coast, anticipating winter, each yearly cycle.
The song attempts to describe poetically the seasonal cycle of the swan, with emphasis on the 'fledgling bond" of the cygnet and mother as well as the challenges of the flock as a whole. The wistful nature of the chorus echoes the migration that never ends...coming aand going, coming and going.
Not only associated with beauty, the departure of swans seemed to accent the melancholia when loved ones were forced to separate. In folk history and perhaps later-day science, swans were found to mate for life.
V. Deerdancers
Deerdancers were theriomorphs, that is, creatures that shared both animal and human features. The human with antlers were part of sacred ceremonies performed by indigineous peoples or archaic sketches made inside cave sanctuaries from neolithic times. Well-documented in books and fims of explorers, the modern most famous caves were discovered by chance at Lascaux in France.
Theriomorphic images were also common to the inner vision in shamanic trance quests, accompanied by bright phospshenes and flashes of light, including zigzags, stair-steps, spirals, spots and dots, jigjags, jots. They hearlded entrance into a vision transformational experience which would be followed by hallucinogenic sightings and inner lessons for the initiate.
The song attemted to bring into an audio recording a mostly hallucinogenic experience. I wanted the words to suggest the overwhelming trance experience and its meaning, even if somewhat in check.
VI. Grey Whales!
If not clear by now, "The Land Bridge of Bering Strait" was my most zoomorphic song cycle, which I had not planned originally. Starting with the peculiar "Wave-Swept, Wind-Blown" about the native inter-tidal zone, my artistic person did not re-emerge until "Shangri-La" in the Himalayan mountains. Including the two songs above were six songs, including a vast zoology of creatures: deer, grey whales, brown bear, seals, gulls, salmon, oysters, nudi branches, crab, mussels, starfish and most importantly, the crytozooid Sasquatch, otherwise known as the Yeti, in the Himalayas of Asia.
Other important subjects in the song cycle were bridges, crossings, gateways, translocations and migrations. As the I Ching would say, "Crossing the great water signaled great good fortune or (perhaps) reasons for desisting." It seemed I had moved from a desert (sand) song cycle to an ocean (water) song cycle to a song cycle that bridged the two (land and sea) , yet in zoomorphic form.
"Grey Whales!" was a happy song with ecstatic vistas of the West Coast: British Columbia, Northern California, redwoods and abalones. Scammon, a grey whaler who discovered the grey whales' birthing waters in the Baja California changed mid-life as a person to become a protector of the slaughtered species.
My family once had the good fortune to see a grey whale breech no more than a hundread yards from shore in the headland waters of the village of Mendocino. Typically, you could only see their water spouts a few miles from shore. It was an unasked for blessing.
VII. Song of the Sasquatch
Every song cycle had a break-through song that was not neccesarily the most melodic or poetic. Yet, they "pushed the envelope," as it were, to break ground in the genre of folk music. To me, these songs were "Corn Tassel..," "Cooking the Heart" and "The Song of the Sasquatch."
"The Song of the Sasquatch" was a narrative in the day of the life of a Sasquatch, with his inner thoughts about life and death and the challenges presnted in discussion. A kind of dialogue moved back and forth between objective narrator and the subject, the so-called missing link.
After being hit by a lightning bolt, in frustration, he broke a geode he had gathered from an underground cave the, geode field. The two haves parted, the yin and yang, the crystals within aglow. In the growing storm, he found himself in a grotto alone to face the questions of existential philosophy, the "the empty mind" of Zen Buddhism and deconstructive argument of Socrates.
To my surprise, the last scene described the crisis of emptiness, which is the mahayana essence of profound realization before enlightenment. Empty mind is an utter prerequisite. The thunderstroke of heaven, an omen suggesting the vajra or adamantine way. The song does not commit to whether Sasquatch lived or died as an entity. Instead, the song left the song, "Shangri-La," two songs hence, to cope with the answer.
VIII. skull/antler/bone
"skull, antler, bone" followed "Song of the Sasquatch" which took the obvious course to death, the question and its remains. The elemental remains were pointed to at length, in many different environments: "the ridge of boulder stone." "the beach of ocean swell," "the grass of prairie thorn," "the branch of cloudy spring," "the pine of forest soil,""the wave of salty brine."
Like the painter Georgia O'Keeffe, in her southwestern artistic visions, the remains of bone, skull, cross and flowers illustrated a beauty and profundity beyond life, transcending the death process. I wanted the remains of living processes which were over to speak beyond their demise, like speeches from orators centuries of old. The beauty and fragility of relics continued in the heart and mind.
The song played off the major key (life) to the minor key (death). It was meant to be lugubrious and melancholic which emphasized the end of life and the remains that suggested what life had been. It was a salute even though these remains would themselves pass into earth and become dust, forgotten.
IX. Shangri-La
My first exposure to the concept of Shangri-La was the famous novel by James Hilton, "Lost Horizon.". It was exotic and mysterious, which is the same reason many travelers made pilgrimages to the East, according to Hermann Hesse. Later, I realized "Shangri-La was a trans-illteration of the correct name, Shambhala, the Tibetan translation for Shangri-La. Still, I decided to stick with the original Western title of the book and movie due to familiarity.
My surprise in "Shangri-La" was the middle eight which developed as the "answer" to Hamlet's question in the Shakespeare soliquoy, "To be or not to be." Studying the lyrics, I dropped the "or" due to lyric beats per measure. It answered shockingly the dilemma of the Sasquatch in the grotto two songs before in the song cycle. Even with death, emptiness was significant in the resolution of life's conundrums and familiarity.
Thus, in the crossing of the "Land Bridge" from death to life, both Hamlet and the literal Sasquatch figured the ending. The question of life and death was not either/or or fixed. Instead, it was the realization of emptiness (and form, emptiness), as articulated by the Buddhist master, Nagarjuna. No Buddhism existed without emptiness. No mind, or emptiness, was essential to enlightenment and the present moment of awareness.
X. Flower Arrows (The Bear Sending Ceremony)
The Bear Sending Ceremony on the island of Hokkaido in northern Japan was an ancient ceremony wherein a literal bear was sacrificed in order to be sent back to the circumpolar sky bears of heaven as restitution for its borrowed time on earth with the Ainu.
The bear was discovered as a cub without a mother and indulged in humn society into bear dulthood when its strength was too much for a mere bamboo cage. Then, the bear was "sent back" to its family. Thus, the books were balanced, mainly because the bear could go home again, free of its earthly duties and be happy.
"Flower Arrows" were shot at the bear to enrage it in its cage before sacrifice. The arrows were an irritant factor but were not harmful or lethal to the beast. Rage was interpreted as excitement that the bear possessed for returning to its bear family in the sky (the Big and Little Bears circling the pole star).
The song was the closing number and benediction for the first three song cycles. An instrumental at first, with words added later, it worked under both conditions. Which was better was the audience's choice, for the instrumental seemed to have a silent benediction while the vocals suggested hidden messages within for contemplating the all thirty songs.
