Miles of Dust
A visionary report from Brad:
A few nights ago I accidentally heard a Miles Davis recording that almost literally blew my mind. It was his early classic recording of the Rodgers and Hart tune, “It Never Entered My Mind.” Released in 1959, he is backed by Red Garland’s piano, Philly Jo Jones on drums, and Paul Chambers on bass. The extraordinary sound that Miles produced on this song pierced me and I told Hillary that he did something to me that I cannot explain. I felt as if I was on the verge of entering cosmic consciousness. I went to sleep tingling with n/om and prayed while soaking in the tones of Miles Davis which had penetrated my whole body.
Sure enough, I was sent in dream to a spiritual classroom. Hillary and I were with some of our Sacred Ecstatics tribe members, in particular one woman and her family. I turned to her and said, “When we turn to dust it is a joyous experience that lasts forever.” At that moment her father (who has recently been ill) turned to dust and was blown away into the clouds. I immediately said to her, “I will now do the same. Come along and feel it.” I then also transformed into dust and blew away, only to later come back fully re-materialized. I looked at her and asked, “How did that feel?” She couldn’t speak a word. Her face was illumined like the sun and her smile acknowledged the truth that somehow all is eternal.
Composer Alec Wilder wrote that this Rodgers and Hart song “employs a very strange and effective harmonic device I’ve heard only one other time in popular music, in Cole Porter’s ‘Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye.’ For six measures it moves back and forth every half measure from F major to A minor.” Some of you will remember that this Cole Porter melody is one of our sacred songs that came to us in a spiritual classroom. It taught us that while saying goodbye brings a moment of death, when that minor chord follows a major chord, the cord to God resonates a song.
As life takes you from major to minor, sweet to bitter, and hello to goodbye, change keeps alternating and circulating to assure that even though we all become dust we can always trust the eternal sunshine and heavenly climb that outlasts the whole of time.
We invite you to take a song soak:
– The Keeneys, November 23, 2018