celebrating 70 with di, lucie, and dead and company...

For the past few weeks THIS song has been swimming in and out of my head: it shows up in my dreams, when I am working in the yard, and while trying to stay focused on the PBS Newshour.

The lyrics, by the late Robert Hunter, were originally his hommage to Janis Joplin. Brother Jerry Garcia of blessed memory crafted the trippy and dream-like music. In the new Dead and Company fronted by Bobby Weir and John Mayer, it is performed in an even slower groove than the original. 

All I know is something like a bird
Within her sang
All I know she sang a little while
And then flew on
Tell me all that you know
I'll show you snow and rain

If you hear that same sweet song again
Will you know why?
Anyone who sings a tune so sweet
Is passin' by
Laugh in the sunshine, sing
Cry in the dark, fly through the night
Don't cry now, don't you cry
Don't you cry anymore, la, la, la, la
Sleep in the stars, don't you cry
Dry your eyes on the wind, la, la, la, la

If you hear that same sweet song again
Will you know why?
Anyone who sings a tune so sweet
Is passin' by
Laugh in the sunshine, sing
Cry in the dark, fly through the night

Don't cry now, don't you cry
Don't you cry anymore, la, la, la, la
Sleep in the stars, don't you cry
Dry your eyes on the wind, la, la, la, la

All I know is something like a bird
Within her sang
All I know she sang a little while
And then flew off
Tell me all that you know
I'll show you snow and rain

This summer - and especially in the days leading up to today's 70th birthday - the song AND the Dead have awakened a mystical, musical urgency within me. Not an obsession, mind you. I've done obsession before and know the difference. No, this is more like stumbling upon an unoffiliated Celtic monk, a vagaran, heeding the call of the road to wander in search of her/his place of resurrection. The song's musical changes - as well as its poignant lyrics and improvisational intensity - speak to my heart in a new/old way. I hear order and chaos, wandering and focus, beauty and dissonance, sorrow and celebration, freedom and structure in pursuit of the spirit all going on at once. It's like an audible Hopi or Tibetan sand mandala: here for a moment of delicate elegance and then gone forever. In a word, "Bird Song" sounds like how I want to live: open to the possibilities of the moment, grounded in the alternative wisdom of compassion rather than the market, all in pursuit of tender solidarity. It's what I've started to practice and call embodied prayer.

Once upon a time, theologian Tex Sample wrote that the world often becomes more livable for those taking-in a Dead concert: anything goes and people are more open with one another (in part because they're high but also because they're consciously seeking the fullness of life in this moment.) That's been my experience over the years. And moving back into this alternative groove feels a bit like a blessing and a type of prefigurative resistance designed to fortify my heart against the cruelty of our contemporary brokedown palace. I said to Di this morning at breakfast, "The Dead create an alternative universe when they play - a bold and creative encounter that is so different from the one we're living in right now - it's like going on a retreat that feeds all your senses." Some look at these events as escapist. No doubt that's true in part, but it's never the whole enchilada for this is a sacramental groove that incarnates a kinder, gentler way of being if only for a few hours. It is a way of being that I want to celebrate more fully as this new year around the sun unfolds for me. Like St. Paul said in Romans 12: "Here's what I want you to do, with God's help, present your whole body to the world as a living sacrifice." 

Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you. (Peterson's The Message version)

I think the new version of "Sugaree" captures the spiritual nuances that I want to reclaim in my soul this year:  shake it, shake it, Sugaree.  There's a quiet ecstasy to this song that transcends my wounds. I heard it the first time inside a small tent at Watkins Glenn in the summer of '72. After a torrential rain storm drove the gathering tribes into our tents for a few hours, the Dead came out at the end of the deluge for a sound check. The combination of the sun peeking through the darkness to the early strains of "Sugaree" lit a fire within me that continues to burn. To be sure, there've been times when I felt disconnected or lost. But as St. John like to say: 

What came into existence was Life, and the Life was Light to live by.
The Life-Light blazed out of the darkness; and the darkness couldn’t put it out.

 

This lazy and playfully ragged version just oozes attitude - not in a crass, cranky, or snarky way - just pure funky joy. I can't help but smile when I hear "Sugaree." It starts with that bluesy rock shuffle, adds some Garcia/Mayer guitar licks that meander around the melody before heading for outer space, softly slides into the verse before welcoming us all into the chorus: shake it, shake it, Sugaree. It gets downright inspirational, too when the last verse invites us into the Jubilee. It may only last as long as the concert, but Jubilee is the restoration of creation and human relations based upon compassion and justice. Isaiah 63 and Luke 4 cut to the chase:

Jesus stood up to read from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah that was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. God has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed and proclaim the year (Jubilee) and the Lord’s favor.” When he was finished, he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him so he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.

Like I said, it's prefigurative embodied prayer in all the right ways and I can't help but shake my booty EVERY time I hear it. One last thought: Bobby Weir has now refigured this band as Dead AND Company. When brother Jerry od'd on heroin while in rehab back in 1995, it looked like shakedown street was cooked and over for the Grateful Dead. Twenty years later, however, Weir pulled together some of the original band (both drummers), found two new groove masters (on keyboards and bass) and welcomed in the NEW gun in town on lead guitar: John Mayer. As I take in the way these cats remake the old tunes, turning them inside out and upside down before reframing them with precise abandon, I experience creativity in a genuinely intergenerational key. Take a look the crowds who gather for these Dead happernings. They are equally intergenerational. And watching old man Weir (who used to be the young pretty boy of the band) hold down center stage in all his white-haired, Zen bodisatva glory as he stands alongside the new pretty, bad boy Mayer, is a vision of today that I need to see more often. It looks and sounds like trust to me - and that's something I need to see more of as this year unfolds. Take a listen as the boys sing: God DAMN but I declare: have you seen the light? Yes, yes, yes, and it makes me want to SHAKE it, Sugaree!