Last month, playing the solo on Billie’s Bounce, the first Parker tune I learned
I have recently realized that the link between dreams and quiet voices – the messages I get from my subconscious self, or what people call intuition – is actually a two-way enterprise. I can tell my subconscious what to work on, in a manner of speaking, as I lay sleeping.
The song in my mind, as I passed in and out of dreamland in the morning, was ‘Stella by Starlight’ The Charlie Parker tune. I have been listening to it on Spotify nearly every day for the last week, as I learn the solo on my saxophone. This in itself isn’t remarkable, I have been learning Bird solos for 5 or 6 tunes for the last few months. I have started to go play outside. Yikes, it has only been 8 years since I had a saxophone, and another 10 before that since I practiced. Been awhile…
The Muse(ic)
I have never woken up dreaming in music like I did this morning. All of my other DQV posts were written while I was playing the sax again, so nothing outward has changed in my behavior. However, I am pretty inspired by Stella. It’s a heart-wrenching, beautiful, sorrowful, unforgettable tune and Parker’s solo is the passionate cry of a vulnerable and beautiful soul. The Romantic Soul. I am in love with it, and I’ve been trying to learn it for over a week, the same way I have learned a few others (Now’s the Time, Billie’s Bounce) but I was literally practicing and singing simultaneously in my dreams
When I took some first and second year Cognitive Science courses in college (undergrad), the primary working theory of cognition was that it takes place on a spectrum between word and image (though what we mean by image has changed with technology). This was something else. This was thinking in pure melody. I heard it in my mind, I sang it silently. My fingers were likely moving in my sleep though I can’t know that for sure.
It wasn’t even particularly about anything I did yesterday, since it was my one day off practicing saxophone each week. I didn’t even play yesterday. But the music was real, as if it was coming from my speakers and I were playing it at the same time.
In this way, I can see how to program my subconscious. I just finished practice today and I was far better than I left off two days ago, specifically at Stella. How did that happen if I wasn’t playing?
In my dreams
Which begs the question: how much of my quiet voce, my intuitive truth, the remainder inside when all else is still… How much of that is under my active control? I think this is at least a different take on the phenomenon of visualization that athletes and new age coach’s practice. The one in the seminal ‘Think and grow rich’ by Napoleon Hill and many other echoes of the ‘be successful’ lifehacking promises in pop marketing and self-help circles. Some is legit but most is poorly communicated, and much to the point of being less than useless. I tend to ignore things like that, and have never read ‘The Secret’. It seems a bit wishy-wishy. My mentors showed me that sweat and suffering were part of success and that hard work separates those who find it from those who don’t.
The thing is, I’ve worked hard, for years, to varying success. And I’ve had success that looks like it was luck.
So, which is it?
I’m not sure. But I do know I’m having fun playing fantasy, and that I have been working every day for a long time now, and am still motivated and enthusiastic to keep going. The most beautiful part, the music came into my dream last night as I was chasing dream-criminals with my father. Hi Paul! Thanks for the gifts.
Prismatic lakes of Yellowstone, from my summer sojourn in 2020 wile the wildfires raged
Amethyst chasms open underneath boiling cauldrons of deep earth water, hot enough to cook. Pools, deadly gaping maws designed to sparkle, dazzle, and mesmerize, lure humans like flies in traps set on shifting sandy earth. An alien landscape touched by the alchemical curse of Alkali…
A journey through Agave Liquors or The Currency of Attention #1
Every once in a while, we get to experience spontaneous fun. One of these moments was the other day when I wondered into a wanderful experience, driven by curiosity and an open mind. It was an experience that taught me a lot about artisanal Tequila and Mescal, got me pretty buzzed, and created some new friends out of strangers. It all started with a question.
For the record, I don’t drink. I might have a glass of wine with a fine meal, once a month or so. But I don’t keep any alcohol in my home, and I don’t go out to bars or clubs. Not as a rule, but just in practice. Partly because of COVID but mostly because I’ve gotten whatever I wanted out of those kinds of experiences already, and they hold no mystery for me anymore.
But I do appreciate fine things. In fact, this whole blog was conceived as a vehicle to muse on my adventures with the Aristotelian principal of the loving contemplation of worthy things. Aristotle believed that a happy life is one devoted to contemplation, obviously he practiced what he preached…. In this spirit, I consider all things done with care, deep knowledge, practice and fine technique to be worth learning about.
With this in mind as I came back from the beach at sunset, I walked in to the liquor store on the main street that runs through this tiny town on the Pacific coast of Mexico. It sits on the main street through town with all the surf shops, restaurants and bars, real estate offices, and parks with kids skateboarding. The street ends at the Pacific Ocean, just waiting there like a massive sleeping fun beast.
The store is small, but inviting, and packed with twisted bottles on shelves, the most ornate right at eye level. Many types of Tequila, Mezcal, Raicilla, Pox, Sotol, Charanda, and all kinds of mysteries. The store was empty and I have been thinking about trying to visit a Tequila distillery to learn more about how it’s made. Agaves are strange alien plants, beautiful and dangerous, that seem more wise tree for their 80 year lifespan. I have come to know some green Agaves during my time in Sedona. I’ve long known that Tequila comes from Agave. It says so on the bottles I drank as a teenager. I have seen the agave farms in the countryside in this part of Mexico, and it just seems like a natural thing to do here.
Moses, the shopkeeper
“Hola, buenas.” I said as I entered. I say this everywhere in Mexico.
“Hola. Que te puedo ayudar?” asked the man behind the counter. It’s not a full question, but serves nonetheless. He had a creased, tanned face, with lines deep from his smile, and many smiles before that.
I studied the shelves. There were hundreds of bottles, filled with different color liquid from clear to dark brown, in various shapes and looking various levels of expensive. I thought I might buy a small bottle to try it, and to keep at home to serve to guests. Being a good host is important to me. I knew nothing about artisanal brands of tequila, but chose a few small bottles based mostly on price and the unique shape, and walked up to the counter.
Rather than just buy and walk out, it occurred to me that this man might be able to shed some light on what makes for a good tequila. I’ve been a bartender at fine restaurants, and spent some time with a sommelier who was studying to take the Master Sommelier exam, which is brutal: a blindfold taste of 5 random bottles of any kind of wine from anywhere, of any year. Passing grade, to be named a ‘Master Sommelier’ means to be able to name the make, year, varietal, and region of at least 3 of them, based just on blind taste. There is a method to it and it can be learned. Still, it’s a daunting task.
So there must be a reason some tequilas cost a few dollars, and others a few hundred.
Smiling, with undivided attention, and in Spanish that I hope sounds smooth, I politely asked the teller what was the difference in the three bottles I chose. He smiled, and his answer was 2 hours long and tons of fun.
His name was Moses. He seemed to have been bored, but when I asked him to explain, his eyes lit up, he leaned forward, and smiled. I got the impression this was not his first time doing everything that came next.
Artisanal vs. Commercial
First, he took out a little Artisanal Tequila book from under the counter, and laid it open for me. In Spanish he described the process of harvesting Agave for Tequila.
There are over 200 varieties of Agave that we know of, all growing around the arid, hot ecological region in the SW US and all over Mexico. Tequila is made out of only one of them, the Blue Agave, and it has a specific humidity range that covers Mexico from the Pacific to the Caribbean, running right through Mexico City. Tequila is only made in 5 states in Mexico, Jalisco being the #1, and including Nayarit, where I am living. Mezcal, on the other hand, can be made from green Agave, and is made out of around 30 of them. Mezcal is being produced almost everywhere in Mexico.
To harvest the Agave, they cut all the arms off, leaving a large ball. This is called La Pina, which literally means Pineapple. It looks just like one, though giant and round. Inside the Pina is the Aguadulce, or sweetwater, the raw material they need to make liquor. It is not drinkable at this point, there are too many bitter and toxic compounds.
So they cook them. For Tequila, they cook the Pinas in a brick room, above ground. This room is fumigated and has good ventilation, so the Pinas come out without any flavor added. For Mezcal, they bake them in an underground oven, like a sweat lodge, and the smoke stays in the room. The Pinas all take on the smokey flavor, which can be quite complex and varied.
After cooking, they leave them in barrels to ferment. Most are fresh wood, but this Is where the fun stuff comes in.
So far, I’ve learned a lot I didn’t know. But It has also been fun chatting with this friendly guy, and I like him. Right about here is where he starts talking about the differences in pricing, and quality. As he does, he reaches back behind him, where I see about 20 bottles, all of which have varying degrees of liquid in them. They have all been opened.
He pulls out 5 different bottles, clearly considering what to choose based on what I’ve said about my preferences. If you are going to do something, do it the best way, so that’s what I asked for. He pours a small tasting shot out of the first bottle, and I sip. This is a fancy twisty bottle with liquid in the stopper top. It is extra volume of the same liquor, and is real. This bottle is covered in Black of some material, a label that covers the whole bottle.
The Tasting
I sip it like I was taught from the Sommelier.
First, appreciate with the eyes. The liquid is dark, Amber to the point of being purple-brown. I have a paper shot glass, but it looks transparent, not just translucent. Clear, though dark.
Next, the smell. The heat of alcohol is nicely wrapped in sweet caramel, cherry, molasses-y and spice-flavored olfactory notes. Well balanced.
Finally the sip, done properly with a lot of air. The oxygen enhances the flavor and aroma. I sense a sweet explosion, though very rounded out. Rich and deep flavor, nothing astringent, both sweet and savory. It changes in my mouth, from spice to candy, over 10 seconds.
I like it.
Artisanal tequilas are produced while putting quality over quantity. This means a few things, practically.
First, they let the Agaves grow until they are 30. That means for 30 years, they do not harvest a field. Wine grapes can be harvested every year. Most tequilas you have heard of, including Don Julio, Patron, Hornitos, etc. harvest after only 4 years… babies in the Agave world. Agaves live up to 80 years, and flower once. This patience for harvest means more complex, more mature, and far less volume to begin with.
Next, they re-use barrels from other kinds of liquor. Whiskey barrels, Red Wine barrels, Scotch barrels, you name it. This makes up most of the difference between the different Brands of Artisanal tequila.
Another difference lies in how long they ferment it. Anejo means about 2 years. 2-4 years is Extra-anejo. More than that is Super-Anejo. The best tequilas (of this type) are 4-8 years, and the longest is 10. That’s because the barrels lose a huge amount of liquid every year, absorbed by the wood and evaporated through osmosis. This first Tequila I tasted was 8 years old, aged in a Whiskey barrel.
Another difference is the technology behind the actual mashing process. Truly Artisanal manufacturers use technology that was around before industrial machines. That means using a giant circular stone, pulled around by a horse harnessed to a long pole, that mashes the agave pinas as it rolls around on top of them. All processes done by hand. Impressive.
We continued down the line. I tasted a Tequila from a regular barrel, aged 6 years. A Red Wine barrel, a Scotch barrel. And my favorite (and it turns out Moses’ too) was aged 4 years in a whiskey barrel, and 4 years after that in a Red Wine barrel, It was not as sweet as the first, and still incredibly balanced, with enough personality and acid backbone to carry it’s flavors. It was more complex, but lighter than the first one.
Next, he pulled out three clear bottles, of something called Cristalino. It is Extra-Anejo, but they filter out all the color. It’s fine, but missing the richness of the unfiltered liquor, in my opinion.
Susan Walks In
The first, and only, mezcal that I like
About this time a woman arrived. She was in her 50s, with short blond hair, and a petite frame. She was there to buy some water. Moses offered her to taste the tequilas with me. I was surprised at first, since we had been talking for more than a half hour, but it was his liquor.
I introduced myself. She replied in an Aussie accent, apparently she was living in Colorado and came to Mexico to escape the mental atmosphere of the US. Her Spanish wasn’t great, but Moses asked me to explain everything so far to catch her up. I did so, knowing that reciting something, the act of trying to remember, is a very powerful tool to help my own memory. I threw myself into it, thought I had had a few shots’ worth of fine liquor already, and zero tolerance.
She was duly impressed by the flavors. We returned to Moses, it seemed he had more to share with us. He asked me to translate a Mezcal named ‘Devorador de Pecados. I guess because he wants to explain to other customers after me in English.
Translating ‘Devorador de Pecados’ for Moses leads to…
I began to translate from Spanish to English as Moses continued his tale. My Spanish is ok. I don’t have to translate from English in my head, but it’s not a smooth thought process.
Even if I pause often to remember a word, or mess up gender suffixes from time to time, I can still mostly carry a conversation. I credit my biggest advances with Spanish fluency to hanging out at night with other kids in Venezuela, at 16 years old, while they drank Calimochos (rum and coke) and joked around. I had to try to keep up with 3 different conversations at the same time. While drinking. I still speak better when I’m buzzed. It was going swimmingly now.
Moses kept walking us through liquors, and even took a few tastes himself of his favorites. We went through a total of 9 different Tequilas. Moses just kept pulling bottles from the shelves behind him. This was his show. He clearly appreciated that I was listening and that I remembered what he said.
“Usualmente no lo hago, pero… es porque tu sabes.”
‘Because I know,’ but really because I was listening.
…The secret meaning of the Scorpion in side bottles of Mezcal
I was curious about the Mescals, and told Moses I had not found one I liked yet, but was open to it. He pulled out 5 bottles from the shelves behind him. We tasted them in 2 rounds, first of 3 and second another 2. Each round was curated by Moses, based on our tastes so far. He considers himself a bit of a maestro. That seemed a funny thought to me, buzzed as I was. Moses the Maestro. He liked the name.
Moses the Masetro, and Mezcals worth Mentioning
Mescals can be sharp, or dull. Bitter or sweet. Its hard to know what to look for. All I know is that there was one, not too strong, more balanced, that I liked, once I got over the smokiness. Knowing where it came from allowed me to accept it more. Kind of like taking a class on John Coltrane made me appreciate his genius, when I could not listen to him before that.
Chatting with Susan, I opened up about what I am doing in Mexico. It was amusing to hear her reply, multiple times, ‘I’m trying to do that too.’ There is something that is being shared, even if we are not aware of it, a reaction, a personal place we are all in separately at the same time, caused by some shared realities over the past year. It is a good thing to remember as I spend most of my days in solitude. A sleeping power, or a force lying dormant, for now, but shared and waiting to be discovered.
Yes, that’s the same liquid in the stopper. Bonus
I had to call this ride to an end, though, I was drunk. It was 8 pm, we had tasted 14 different kinds of liquor, and I still wanted to do my Yoga for the day. Susan seemed disappointed the tasting had come to an end. We bid farewell, and exchanged WhatsApp numbers. I walked home, satisfied.
Moses is the kind of proprietor I willingly buy expensive things from. I chose my favorite Tequila, Adictivo Super-Anejo, and the one Mezcal that I liked, Devorador de Pescados, the one that told the myth of the origins of Mezcal, and bought them. The Tequila was still 3 times as expensive as the Mezcal… but now I have a story, and some knowledge, and a sensory experience to share with house-guests.
Look what I got into today, a day well spent, just because I listened and paid attention. I made friends with Moses the Maestro, and the Aussie woman named Susan. And I learned I like this Mescal, Devorador de Pecados, the eater of sins.
Something told her to stay awake, though a crash from caffeine was catching her full throttle. She couldn’t decide if it was fun or not. Not, mostly. She had scored the prize seat on her flight back from her temporary home, by luck! Without paying for it, the airline counter lady had sat her in the last row of the emergency exit section. More legroom plus a reclining seat! An unexpected luxury. A sign.
When the flight attendant recited the script on opening the door in emergencies, it lingered with her. She found herself wishing for an accident, that old familiar morbid curiosity that had been with her since as long as she could remember. An impulse more than a thought. So she could experience opening the huge, imposing emergency door. A test, if you will. She shook such thoughts out of her head. Again.
“If I pass out, I may never wake up again.” She shook her head.
“Stay awake,” her quiet voice warned. She put in her earbuds but played no music. Better, the silence. She put on her sunglasses; dim felt good right now. Strange sensations of endless rolling vertigo played over her body like ripples through water.
She was here because of a surprise she had found in her father’s attic: the black and white painting of swallows in flight, leaning against the back wall and covered in a thick layer of dust. Something had caught her eye about the painting, and she kept it. At the time she had been shocked into numbness by his sudden death (they told her it was an accident). Months later, while reframing the painting she found $20,000 hidden in the frame, and a note, written by her father, signed:
Find me in the Center, practicing. -Dad
Finding the cash was a sad, guilty pleasure. It was the note that had set her on this journey, but it was the cash that had made it possible. Thank God she had not sold the painting.
She did not realize what it meant until later, after seeing his cold, grey body in the morgue. After numbly thanking her friends and family. After their social niceties. And after all that had faded into silence, forgotten as the world moved on, even though she could not.
The Center, practicing…
The capital c in Center must mean a meditation center in Asia. Her father had spent a few years off and on in Asia during his forties, when she was very young, and she knew he was into spirituality at the time.
The note told of a secret room somewhere. And a space hidden in the stone wall. Did her father leave it to keep it safe? Or because he was in trouble? The note didn’t say. As time passed, and as she kept re-reading the scrawled message, a feeling grew that there was something there for her to find.
The vertigo came in waves. Intense, blanketing waves of tingly, pleasant sensation. A physical response from her body wherever she placed her awareness. Other sensations like a liquid fire bath. Meditation brings benefits of awareness even when one is really high. Too high. And crashing fast. Blood sugar? she thought. Shook her head. Too bad it made her dizzy. It really didn’t help the vertigo. Only time would work its ineffable magics.
Takeoff seemed far, far away, when it happened. She felt the plane, without words to describe it. It became an extension of her sensory consciousness. The pressure of the still air column. The lift of the wings, the sudden transfer of weight off the wheels, front first. The extra thrust given just when the nose lifted, to swiftly leave the earth. The awkward but necessary folding of the landing gear. Then… smooth soft vibrations all over.
It was so unlike her when she finally decided to do something about her feeling. She had always been the stable one, the practical one, who made sure everyone was taken care of. And yet, she always had this darker impulse buried inside that made her want to jump when looking over a cliff, or hold her hand to flame just to see what happens. Or to open the emergency exit door…
Shake the head.
So she had set out without knowing where, with a vague sense of some mystery to uncover. A tangled winding path that led to the other side of the world, her father’s legacy reaching out to her from beyond the grave. As if to make up for all the years he was absent during her childhood. She re-traced her father’s travels, as he described them in her memory: Calcutta, then Burma. Then Goa. From there over to Kuala Lumpur. A brief, very expensive stay over in Singapore.
Lots of flights, all in coach.
After nearly a year of travel, living in dirt-floor huts surrounded by chickens and dogs, battling mosquitoes and malaria, fluent in pigeon English and hand signs, she had been ready to give up. To let go of her father, let his secrets lie. She was broke, tired, sick, and her whole body had ached, when she arrived at the Dhamma Java center outside Jakarta for a 10-day silent retreat. It was free, or donation only, and would feed her. She had been jumping from center to center, and stretched out her last few remaining dollars this way. There, she lost her mind, found the room, and the stone and what was behind it.
It had happened on the 8th day, after she had passed through layers of grief, clinging to the singular thought that this moment is all there is, and all else is transitory. She had been invited to use one of the individual meditation cells for the more experienced students. It was dark, and she had been sitting, agitated, trying to calm her mind, when she noticed a loose stone in the wall. Happy for the distraction, she started pulling at the stone. It came free and in a space behind it was a little black book. A leather-bound journal with her father’s handwritten scrawl all over its pages, suddenly here in her hands.
She flipped through the pages. the notebook was filled with verse; a glimpse into her father’s mind and heart. He had always been one of few words, at least in person. Or maybe just to her…. Her father would always be a mystery to her. She was so much like her mother, and he was so… untouchable. Her father, the secret poet, who never did much with his talent…
She discovered with surprise that he had a vibrant interior life, and had felt sad at times, lonely too. She had known that her grandfather was an abusive alcoholic, though her father never talked about growing up. Still, it felt like a punch in the gut to learn about the hours her father had spent baking in the car on a hot summer day while his father went into the bar and got drunk. And the terror of the ride home, swerving into garbage cans and mailboxes, which her grandfather would not remember later. The worst times, when he would yell and throw things in the kitchen, mostly at his mom. Such pain and raw trauma, it must have been hard for her father to write it. No wonder he had kept himself distant. He obviously did not want to become like his own father. He feared himself.
The poetry was whimsical, like the one about elements and love:
Love is the simplest thing.
Tiny, it buzzes with subatomic force
holding disastrous, awesome power,
yet more often slipping through your fingers.
As wholesome as dirt, it brings forth life,
able to support the most sublime and delicate foliage.
But with bitter taste in mouth and neck,
everyman must eat his peck.
Water naturally must take its course
love stays true to fate from end to source
as true if grave to crib as morn to night
with love comes all righteousness’ insight.
She never knew before that her father thought about these things. He had a warm heart, but his mind was always somewhere else. Finding the notebook ripped open her heart once again. This time she felt the exquisite pain of discovering a profound man behind the façade, of coming to know her father better after his passing. Her heart burst with a sorrowful love for him.
As her eyes grew heavy, the nervous energy seeped out of her cells on the vibrations of the plane. She stretched out her legs. Her head shook no more as she drifted into an unsettled sleep.
A great big monster hand scooped her out of some busy dream and shook her until her eyeballs hurt. Her arms flapped like a doll. Her eyes opened to a blur, uncomprehending. A massive, shrieking groan, felt more than heard, clawed at her eardrums and made her legs itch. The floor dropped away and she fell. The hand threw her towards the ground.
Suddenly she heard all the screaming, coming from everywhere. She realized she was looking at a disintegrating plane. From the inside. There was fire, heat, hurricane winds, smoke, flying debris. Huge ripped holes in the cabin walls like shark bites… giant, sky-swimming Megalodons, made of current and vapor, devouring this tasty juicy meat wagon. Seats were missing too, along with the people sitting in them. Faces were streaked with tears and blood. Moms holding their children in terror. Men with static, blank faces, or others shivering in fear or melting in despair.
When she looked out her window (still there) she was looking straight down at the ground rushing straight for her. She wondered if it was more fun to die outside the plane, falling freely. She decided that it was.
She fished and fumbled with her seat belt and struggled to understand what she was doing. A huge explosion!! And bare sky appeared just in front of her. The seats in the next three rows were gone, suddenly, along with the people sitting in them. She stopped fiddling and grabbed the armrest tightly. Everything was shaking.
Her next thought slapped her in the face: “Did I do this? Did I call this into my story?”
She looked deep within and did not hear a no. Stupid. Trickster mind. She tried to calm her thoughts; it was all she could do these last few seconds of her life.
So it goes.
A sharp sensation shot up her right side and…. she blinked… Someone was standing over her, holding her sweaty arm. She did not understand. “I’m sorry?”
“Ma’am, I apologize for waking you up… you were having a troubled dream.” A flight attendant was standing in the aisle, looking down at her, touching her arm.
She blinked. She shook her head. She looked up at the flight attendant, who smiled at her with genuine concern. “Are you all right?”
She thought about the first page of the little black book of poems, and the inscription there that read:
I love you, and I’m sorry I could not be a better father.
The words were like honey dripped on the open wound of her heart. She would cherish this treasure forever. Something deep inside of her that had always been there, like a tight fist, suddenly relaxed.
I am now she thought, realizing for the first time in her life, she knew she wanted to live. That she was ready to go home.
