In the 1970s,
when we did things like this,
I would sometimes travel
to an artist commune
on a mountain
just outside of Hopland,
where we would assemble
in a meadow
halfway up the mountain
get stoned and play music.
Krishna Bhatt would play his sitar;
his girlfriend,
a tiny slip of a girl,
would improvise on
a delightfully ethereal flute;
whatever other musicians
gathered there that day
strumming,
banging
or blowing
on their instruments of choice;
Musical illiterates,
like me,
pounding out
strange rhythmics
on whatever was near at hand.
We would play music,
often non-stop,
for hours
until night fell.
Then we’d take
the jam session inside
one of the cottages
on that mountain.
Now and then,
one of us would
drop out of the performance
take a toke,
drink of wine, or
just lay back on the grass,
bath in the sounds,
stare at the sky.
For several years,
I spent my summers
on that mountain
with my friend,
living in a teepee
by a little stream
where we would bath
in the mornings.
She, a well-known
civil-rights lawyer,.
She left me for a musician.
That was a common experience
in my life
— not living in a teepee on a mountainside,
but girlfriends leaving me for musicians.
I played the accordion for a while
as a teenager.
I wonder if I kept it up,
it would have made
a difference
in my love life.