“Tales” is evolving.

When I conceived of “Tales from the Attic” I thought it would centre on the many musicians I've jammed with, reminiscences of the tumultuous Greenwich Village in the '60s, on the road with Sharon, Lois and Bram … the folkie stories.

There is some of that, but three of the stories are about Bosnia and Kosovo at war.  Another is about a dark journey into Cocaine; another about anger and sexual repression; and I’m developing one about jealousy.

There are stories about love, connection, and how music creates a harmony not only of chords, but of hearts.  And scattered among these tales are humorous misadventures.

Themes of conflict are emerging, personal, interpersonal and social; some loving conflicts and some not. 

Taking shape for me out of the exploration of these tales is the discovery that there is either love or violence, and even violence is a cry for love.  The first time I heard this from my mentor, Stan Dale, I found it a very hard saying.  How could it be true?  Rape, murder, war… is the Universe driven by two opposite forces or just one?  I question it to this day.  And yet the more I revisit the memories of war torn Bosnia and Kosovo, or the conflict of love and hate in Mississippi… the deeper I dig into the guts of my own soul, the more I find it to be true.

And other themes are emerging as I develop this show… meta themes.  When I was a teenager music was about impressing, getting girls, being admired... in other words, a way of masking the insecurities that lay within.  Now my music is less about putting up a front and more about sharing what’s inside.  I seek out my inner vulnerabilities and wear them, inviting my audience to experience the deeper me, even though I know there will be judgment.  We tend to spend our lives comparing our insides to other people’s outsides.  I don’t want to continue showing up that way.  I rest in the faith that the deeper we look into each others’ eyes, the more we see ourselves. 

Stay tuned for the next installment of discovering who I am and what I’m doing here.  I think “Tales from the Attic” will soon be coming to Shelburne, Ontario, and after that, Toronto.

Love,

Eric

A night on Cocaine

A night on Cocaine

Each object is painted in ritual. The little square of note paper, crisply folded into an origami pocket for the gram.  The gram, sifted, strained ... a scant teaspoonful, but from the paper pocket dreams and desires float on a line of white powder into my brain.

And the ritual of the straw.  Is it a twenty rolled up and held with a rubber band, or the barrel of a Bic pen, or perhaps it’s that little glass tube hiding in an odd sock in the back of my dresser drawer.

I place the mirror out on the bedside table, and the straw, and the gram, ... and the razor blade, old fashioned kind, single edged with the metal lip that fits comfortably between my finger and thumb.

Each object is painted in ritual, infused with magic.  Cocaine, the magic powder through which some take a spiritual journey, seeking the goddess, or messages from the elders.

And we use it for sex.  I chop four fine lines, each an inch long which we snort up each nostril… snort… there is no romantic word to substitute.  You don’t inhale a waft of cocaine, like fanning the misty aroma of a fine brandy.  You snort it up your nose.

And then we crawl into bed.  And presently her beauty unfolds like a time lapse Easter flower.  Every inch of her body electrifies my senses.  Our inhibitions drop away and sex, riding down a line of cocaine blends with my heart, my guts, my soul.  Sex becomes the language of our love, the connection we make, like cream sliding into a glass of tea, we become one.

And stories that spring out of us, ageless fantasies that unite infant to child to youth to now in a way that there is no time. She is a goddess, a mother, a queen, a haughty domina, a bitch.  Her aggression blossoms, She cultivates her selfishness to an art. She takes everything she wants with a singular passion.  And I surrender to everything she takes.  I enfold her power lovingly.  I do this with ease because she is me.  We are each other.  We could switch roles in a flash because all we are doing is playing with the opposites that are one.  As if our souls were like silly putty that stretches when you pull gently, or breaks when you tug and slap it back together.

And when the crystal clarity clouds around the edges we lean over the bedside table and snort again, gliding the tube along the string of ghostly powder, careful to lick up any last tiny grain lest it be left lonely on the mirror…. The mirror, becoming cloudy now with drying saliva.        

And the fantasies, the puffy white clouds among which we soared are settling to the ground and turning dark.  The garden in which we rolled on thick beds of flowers is showing patches of hard earth.  The euphoria is now just out of reach and tinged with a nameless fear.  So we snort again… and again… and again... and we continue to play our games but they are now more desperate as the gram dwindles like watching an hour glass and knowing when the last grain slips away, this glass cannot be turned over. 

When the little paper pocket was full our souls lit up the night, but now our souls are empty and dark even as morning sun exposes us lying motionless among the crumpled bed covers, naked, with an aching need, an anxiety that will not go away.  Exhausted but unable to sleep, unable to calm our beating hearts, that we have betrayed and now must pay the penance of its incessant beating. 

And I wonder if this is how God came upon Adam and Eve after they’d eaten of the forbidden fruit.

I DON'T NEED A HAI WORKSHOP

Hi all, 

The first “Love is a Miracle” weekend workshop of the year is in one month: April 11-13, 2014.  There will be one other, August 22-24.

I don’t need a HAI workshop

Folks sometimes tell me, “A HAI workshop?  Thanks but I don't need one.”  I guess they see a HAI workshop as a means to curing them of a condition and they don’t need fixing.

But fixing people is rarely HAI's job.  Much more often I've watched a HAI facilitator pave the way for a person to discover that they don’t have to think of themselves as broken.

I’ll be the first to proclaim that I don’t need a HAI workshop.  I also don't need delicious food.  But why exist on bland and deny myself the gift?  Don’t I think I’m worth it? 

In fact exploring our thoughts and noticing how they affect us is one of many tools HAI offers along with exercises that provide an opportunity to practice new thoughts.

Here are some other benefits of a HAI workshop: 

HAI looks at fear, not to teach how to get over it but rather how to use it.  Fears often point to opportunities for growth.  HAI offers tools for us to notice our fears, how they are different… or similar… to excitement.  HAI offers me skills to notice when fear limits my choices. 

My father hated dogs.  Little ones were yappy ankle biters and big ones were dangerous.  He reacted to a bark with a raised hand and a raised voice.  Dogs usually responded in kind, validating his fear.  He once told me that as a child he’d been bitten by a dog.  And although he lived with that knowledge, he never changed his attitude.  He maneuvered around dogs when he could, and stayed in fear when he couldn't.  My father didn't need a HAI workshop to get from birth to death.  But if he had ever wanted to expand on his choices, if he had wanted to learn to be comfortable around dogs, if he had ever wanted to enjoy the company of a dog, then a HAI workshop would have helped.

HAI looks at choice, offering tools to notice my choices, see where they serve and where not, and how I can live in greater choice.  I don’t know anyone who would not benefit from expanding on the moment to moment choices of daily life. 

If I don’t need more choice in my life, I don’t need a HAI workshop.  I can manage very comfortably from now until I die.  But isn't comfort seductive?  It seems safer to hang back and not snatch at the risks life offers us.  As Stan Dale used to say, avoiding risk is like living in a plush-lined coffin. 

HAI doesn't require dogma. There is actually very little one needs to believe in order to benefit from HAI.  It is not about beliefs, but about skills.  Chakras, God, meridians, atheism, or extra terrestrials – your beliefs are none of HAI's business; and most importantly there is no need to follow the preaching of some guru.

HAI does hold some fundamental beliefs that match mine.  I believe all people are beautiful at their core.  I believe that there is only love or violence, and that even violence is a cry for love.  I believe that there are better ways to deal with conflict than guilt and blame.  I believe I am my perfect partner, that I am responsible for my behaviour and you are responsible for yours.

HAI creates community, bringing folks together with the common aim of replacing ignorance and fear with awareness and love; a community where folks can experience an expansion of intimacy instead of contraction; where we can create a space for our partner to be who they are, and for us to be who we are so we can spend more time with family, partners, workmates and friends in an atmosphere of safety and trust.

 

HAI creates miracles.  I’m ever amazed by how many have told me their lives have been changed by the “Love is a Miracle” workshop.  I've attended HAI for more than a dozen years and they still have a powerful impact.  Each one affords me an opportunity to put my learning into practice. 

But it isn't for everyone.  I have met those who've walked away from the workshop saying, “Nope.  Not for me.”  I don’t know what makes us different.  I can only speak for myself, and I think what creates this match is my curiosity about people, about myself in particular.  What makes me tick has been a guiding beacon for my path of growth.

For me it all boils down to this: if I’m not on a path of personal growth then a HAI workshop is wasted on me.  But if I am into moving, changing, exploring, then a HAI workshop is a perfect place to grow, to discover and incorporate new behaviours.

So if you decide that you don’t need one but might want to give yourself the gift of a HAI workshop, please get in touch. 

Love,

Eric

Privilege

Privilege

I grew up Jewish in a Catholic neighbourhood.  There were ways in which I was marginalized on my block, hanging out with friends who not quite accepted me.  My father telling us at the dinner table how walking past the parochial school one warm afternoon he heard the nun telling her students that the Jews killed Christ; and at other times in my life, as a conscientious objector in a time of war, as an atheist in a progressively fundamentalist society.  But you don’t see that when I walk down the street, or when I apply for a job, or chat someone up in a bar.  I can choose when to let people know the ways in which I have felt less than privileged.

For many years I kept my Jewishness to myself and when people told Jewish jokes or called someone a Hymie, I would laugh along or nod my head. 

My grandfather’s name was Hymie.

But as the times and my surroundings changed I'd sometimes use my Jewishness as a badge to show that I was marginalized too.  I could hide or flash chameleon-like depending on convenience.  Now when people point to my privilege I refrain from whipping out the Jewish card. 

In June 1966, slogging down Highway 51 under the blistering Mississippi sun, advocating for voting rights, I was shocked when a black marcher looked me in the eye and said, “We don’t want you here.  We don’t want integration.  We want separation: Black Power.”  What the hell was he talking about?  Weren't we all in this together?  Wasn't I no different from him?  (There were many others on that march who did appreciate my company but it was a time of upheaval within the black community).  I didn't want to see that he couldn't hide his heritage as I could mine.  I just thought he was an asshole.

Since then I've been married to a black woman, and seen how the marginalization she grew up with contributed to her damage and how she lost her valiant fight for privilege.  I've been lovers with a woman who was a boy inside, witnessed the struggle of accepting and then the more painful struggle of declaring the dichotomy.  Notice I use the word ‘the’ in the previous sentence rather than ‘her’ or ‘his’ because not even our language has a word to describe my friend’s gender.  Those and other experiences left me knowing that I can only witness and never fully experience the struggles of others.

I was at a meeting recently in which a group of us were exploring gender diversity and identification of sexuality.  I heard a lot of people say some of their best friends were diverse, that they have no trouble accepting folks who are different, as if that absolved them of responsibility.  I identified with them, remembering how at one time I led myself to believe that I understood being marginalized.

But I don’t.  I cannot step out of my shoes of privilege.  I am not Tiresias who became a seer by living seven years as a woman.  I see so much of the world through the blinders of privilege.  It’s not enough just to say some of my best friends are queer as if that were an excuse for inaction, as if that exonerated me from being part of the problem.  If I want to be less of the problem, I need to be diligent in seeking ways in which I stereotype, ways in which I judge and I need to speak out, to act, because it is we, the privileged who hold the power for change.

There is a conundrum for me.  I believe with all my heart what Stan Dale first told me and HAI reinforces every workshop, that the deeper I look in your eyes the more I see myself, that I know you, you are just like me.  I live by the mantra that all there is is love or a cry for love.  And yet I must not kid myself into believing that I know where you came from, that I know your struggle.

We are all identical at our human core, but humanity has a lot of digging to do before all of that core can fully shine in the light.

Thanks and love,

Eric

Birthday/Deathday

I am very grateful to all of you who wished me a happy birthday last week.  It warms my heart to be recognized and honoured by so many.  I want you to know I’m enjoying sex, love, intimacy and service at the age of 71.

A birthday is a good time to look back and look ahead.  It’s the ahead part I’d like to talk about.  I know I look younger than my years.  My dad was pretty young looking as he aged.  Longevity runs in my family so I can look forward to several more years of life. 

Still, I am much closer to the end of life than the beginning.  I am not 71 years young, as some folks suggested, and I choose not to spend each birthday repeating the tired Jack Benny joke.  In the scheme of things 71 is old.  I appreciate the person who said on Facebook, “I’m glad you’re still walking on this planet.”  It seemed a sincere sentiment that embraced my age instead of denying it.  And yes, I’m glad too.

My choice is to prepare for death rather than deny it, so I can embrace it when it comes.

I fear death, (not nearly as much when I was young), but denial is not the tool with which I choose to engage it.  I’d rather say hello to fear and give it whatever space it needs.

So as I look to the future, permit me to use this birthday message to share my beliefs about my death.  Beliefs about death are largely religious so I think it only polite to ask permission, and to share them as personal beliefs, not necessarily yours.

I will die, not to live again.  I have not lived before and I’m not coming back.  I’m not going to heaven or to some limbo holding pattern like a Dreamliner in a crowded sky looking for a slot to land.

I have a soul, but what I call “soul” is quite different from other definitions.  At the very core of every one of my cells dwells the DNA that brought me here, the blueprint that is on the one hand practically identical to yours, and on the other identifies me as unique on this crowded planet of nine billion.  There is nothing ethereal or supernatural about this seeming contradiction and yet to me it is a far more mysterious miracle than any our collective imagination has ever produced.  It seems to me the more we learn about ourselves and the natural universe, the more amazing it all becomes.  Old beliefs are continually left in the dust by more miraculous discoveries that open our eyes daily to the beauty of the universe.

When a book is burned the story lives on in another.  My DNA will disintegrate with me, but yours will remain to multiply.  DNA, my soul, is the glue that unites me with all life; on the one hand uniquely me and on the other universal.  It feels sometimes that my purpose here is to be a vessel, a harbour, and to serve DNA in the same way that other folks serve their God.

Physically, what I’m made of was born in the stars, and to the stars my atoms will return.  Nothing is lost except this fragile ego called ‘Eric’ whose job it is to carry this soul for the short time I’m on this planet. 

So to revisit the fear of death, I see it is but an attachment to my ego, to the conscious me.  I am not a student of Buddhism but I think my foundation in scientific skepticism has brought me to the same conclusion.  I’m ever surprised when I hear people speak of releasing themselves from attachment and still hold on to reincarnation which seem like nothing more than ways to hold on to the personal ‘me’.    

So I have a birthday request.  When I’m ready to die please speak of my death, not transition, not passing, not…

            WHEN I’M READY

When I’m ready to kick the bucket,

Cash in my chips, breathe my last,

When I’m ready to take the long sleep,

Go upstairs, when I’m fading fast,

When I’m ready to meet my maker,

Give up the ghost, take the final ride,

Go the way of all flesh,

Span Jordan’s swelling tide,

When it’s Davey Jones’ Locker,

Bite the big one, passing on,

When I’m ready to transition,

Rest eternal, sing my swan song,

In other words to die,

When I’m ready to be dead

Don’t pamper me or euphemise

Or confuse my aching head.

Let me have this last experience

Unsullied by a lie.

I can live life to the fullest

When I know I’m going to die.

Seeing with a different eye

I was on the phone with my sweetie who lives away, chatting about this and that, and she said, “I got hit on today.  He was a nice looking guy and when I said I was going away for the weekend he asked me to take him with me.”

“Did you want to take him with you?”

“I don’t know.  He was kind of cute.  But I said to him – and you’re not going to like this -- I said to him, “Go ask your wife.”

Sweetie was referring to the fact that I don’t appreciate when people ask my wife what kind of relationship they’re allowed to have with me.  I know it’s the usual way partnerships are arranged but not mine; and I often feel like the odd one out when I share that I’m in charge of my relationship decisions.  To me it seems like the adult way to be, but I often see with a different eye, walk a different path.

Before my sweetie and I started to get intimate, to my annoyance she asked my wife if it was OK for us to play.  She doesn’t want to encroach on a sister’s ‘property’.  To the vast majority of folks I meet it just seems ‘natural’ for there to be an ownership between couples, and when hooking up, the first thing to deny themselves is permission to love freely.

Anyway to get back to my story, when she told him to go ask his wife, he hemmed and hawed. 

“And then guess what he said next,” she asked me.  “You’ll laugh.”

“What?”

“He said, ‘She’d never say yes.  She loves me too much.’”

I did laugh a bit, not because it was funny but because she knew if she ever asked me the same question my response would be, “I’d never say no.  I love you too much.”

Maybe in the next blog I’ll write about what love is for me.

My Heart

Someone wrote to me, "Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body. ~Elizabeth Stone"

When someone decides for me who I am, I usually get triggered. Ms Stone didn't say "my", she said "your".  So I got to thinking about my children.

My wife wanted a baby, and then didn't, and then did, etc.  I was easy either way.  One day she said the reason she waffles is that I wasn't committed to one way or the other.  So I said, "OK, I'll commit to one way or the other."  I think she thought I would say let's not.  But instead I said we're going to have a baby, and I stuck to that, making sure it happened through her continued waffling until Christopher was born, thirty five years ago on Christmas Day.

When my wife and I broke up, Christopher came with me.  Does my heart walk around outside my body?  That doesn't seem a fitting metaphor for me.  I love him and my heart is open to him, just as my heart has made a huge space for my step-granddaughter, Ava, who basically lives with us.  And... my heart is mine; mine to burst with the thrill of love and break with the pain of loss, to feel pride and shame, to feel compassion and fear.

Over all I'm responsible for what my heart does, and it goes where I go. To picture my heart outside my body conjures implications of loss of choice, and abdication of responsibility. 


And that's me.  I love it when people talk about themselves.




Eric