July 2009 - Dark & Light

On my 18th Birthday my Mother lost her 2 year battle with cancer. She died that night at the young age of 38 years old. This left me relatively alone in my life (as far as immediate family) and also opened a huge door into what I call "the void", the birthplace of all creative potential. I lingered around New Jersey for another few months trying to come up with a plan. I couldn't bear the idea of staying in the town of my High School and my Mother's gradual decline. My Bavarian roots in the German & Austrian Alps birthed a curiosity into what the Colorado Rockies might hold for me. And songs from John Denver and Dan Fogelberg stirred my imagination as well.

In the middle of winter I set off on the road in my beat up old Buick La Sabre that I had bought 6 months earlier for $250. But it died in a blizzard over the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. I continued my journey, but I took the long route. I wound up hitch-hiking over 30,000 miles up and down and across the United States over the next year or so. I had no money, all my belongings (mostly music books and some clothes) fit in my backpack and I still had no "plan". Hitching west was tedious and lonely until after passing through Kansas City. Then suddenly the sky and my mind simultaneously burst open in a great panoramic expanse. There was nothing but nature to be seen from one end of the horizon to the other. And so began the next chapter of my journey. My sleeping bag and the roadside became my home, food became my only expense and luxury, and the road unraveled endlessly before me with a diverse and often dangerous cast of characters. What I did, experienced and learned on the road is a whole other story which I won't get into here. But I will say that it contained everything one might imagine, hope for and fear from a very long and spontaneous road trip.

At 19 years old I found myself in Boulder, Colorado. I was hired as the second pianist playing for a University of Colorado Theatre and Dance Department production. I was paid $50 for 10 weeks of rehearsals and performances. That's $5 per week. I guess that's why they call it a labor of love. It wasn't the money I was looking for anyway. I was looking for something to be a part of. I wanted to "belong". I slept in the foothills in the early fall in my sleeping bag, and as the weather got colder I slept in the bathrooms and dressing rooms of the Theater building until the Director found me out and invited me stay with him and his family at his mountain home for a period of time. After the production ended, so did my welcome at his home. I started to pick up a little extra money playing piano for dance classes and at some lounges and restaurants around town. Soon thereafter I felt very fortunate to rent a room in a basement apartment on "the hill" in Boulder with 4 other guys.

The entire apartment had dirt floors, a single small bathroom, kitchen, 4 small rooms and a boiler room (the dreaded 5th bedroom). We fondly called our apartment "The Pit" and it became known for it's unusual assemblage of musicians, spiritualists and transients. True Bohemia. We shared the $150 a month rent equally at $30 each and I considered myself fortunate to have my own back entrance and to not be sleeping in the boiler room. The guy who slept in there and would emerge every morning soaked in sweat, swearing off the night's heat. I, on the other hand, lived in relative luxury in comparison. I had my own hand made platform bed, sleeping bag, alter with candles, incense and fruit bowl and an old upright piano I was struggling to pay off. I had one tiny little window up on the top of my bed that looked up onto the alley and driveway that I covered in stained glass, creating my own private sanctuary. I loved my room in the Pit.

I spent a lot of my time reading spiritual books like Autobiography Of A Yogi, A Course In Miracles and the Bhagavad Gita. I regularly practiced Tai Chi, meditated, chanted, listened to Keith Jarrett, Paul Winter and Oregon albums and played the piano. Fasting was a good way to get thru those lean times plus it made meditating and chanting that much deeper of an experience. 10 day brown rice fasts were common for me in the cold months and 4 - 7 day water fasts in the warmer months where I would often meditate over 4 hours a day. I had no possessions other than my piano and didn't feel motivated to do much except to explore my present and my muse.

I would imagine that in reading this it would be easy to see this as a very simple and even esthetically pleasing lifestyle. I had no apparent responsibility or agenda. Even in writing this I'm amused at what a nice neat package it presents itself to be and how at this point in my life it sounds almost like a little retreat from the much more complex world I currently live in. But this recounting of my past wouldn't be accurate at all if I didn't interject at this point that I had an ever-present, urgent and intense inner longing to touch upon something that felt "real" and "essential" in my life. Something with content and permanence. I craved experiences and relations that were meaningful to me at the time and that could shed light on the deep feelings and sometimes unbearable aloneness that I experienced on a daily basis. This near anguishing and persistent inquisition into trying to understand not just my place in the world but also this culture and world's place in the universe, motivated everything I did or didn't do and in so many ways still does today.

One night during a longer fast I was sitting on the dirt floor of my room meditating when I noticed this high pitched ringing sound in my ear. I decided to "listen" to it. Then I noticed another lower sound and I decided to listen to it as well. As I continued to listen there gradually appeared more and more tones. I noticed that the more I listened, the more I heard. I also noticed that there were different sounds in different ears. I kept listening and kept expanding my sense of awareness and after a while I found myself immersed in a very deep experience of hearing the most amazingly beautiful atonal noise or sound that i could ever have imagined existed. It was everywhere. I was attentive and focused on it and consumed by it at the same time. It was a phenomenal opening experience that I returned to many times in my meditations for many years. I later found out that my experience was actually of something called the Celestial Harmonies or the Music of the Spheres. A mystical experience of a deeper dimension. The sound of the Universe. The "Word". Once again, another door into the void was opened within me. And this set the stage for the creative exploration which would drive me forward for a long time to come.

I learned that music, light, dark, life and all creation simply exist. That we are creation living within creation. I also learned that to truly witness or experience creation and ourselves within creation we need to slow down, unravel, stop and listen. We need to empty ourselves of our thoughts, beliefs, desires, pains AND triumphs. We need to let go of our concepts of duality, of light and dark; of expanded and contracted and just sit with that sometimes awkward and uncomfortable emptiness that we try and avoid, sometimes for our whole lives long. We, as a culture are always trying to fill ourselves with people and things. Sometimes it's obvious that we try and fill ourselves with anything just to distract ourselves from something else, like a deeper, less comfortable feeling. What if we stopped trying to "fill" all the time and started to "empty". What if we let go of whatever thought, idea or longing that we thought was so important? And then, what if we just allowed that space or void to be there? In my experience, in so doing we've created a void. We become in some ways an empty "container" that in so being sends out an invitation to the "divine" or "essence" to fill this intimate space within us. This is the raw potential or experience of Creation. This is the courtship and dance between the void (emptiness or darkness) with creation (energy or light). And through that experience of emptying and allowing ourselves to be filled, we are forever changed. And this, as human beings and artists, is what we have the opportunity to share and express.

There are many of us filled with this experience. Some are musicians or artists. Some are authors and speakers. And some are teachers by example and simply touch family and friends from this essential place. I've been fortunate enough to know many musicians, artists and humanitarians that travel within this precious experience. But what we often forget is that truly knowing and embracing ourselves is a process that involves light and dark, energy and emptiness, beginnings and endings, joy and sadness. There cannot be one without the other. And without both there cannot be wholeness. The affinity and dependency of darkness and light is true primordial love.  It is the passion from which we were conceived and the devotion through which we will dissolve.    All that exists is the consequence of this enchantment . . . this eternal balance of dark and light. www.peterkater.com

Oct. 2nd, 2008 My Grandfather, My Music

I thought I'd try something a little different with these blogs. As much as my past blogs are fine, I have to admit, going on about how great it is to get Grammy Nominations really isn't what I or my music is all about (as much as I do very much enjoy that). My music comes from a very deep place inside me that has more to do with "soul searching", "deep listening" and "Self inquiry" than with "Award seeking" and a sort of "tra la la" way of bouncing through life. So, I thought I'd write a blog that was "real" for me and more about who I am and what I think about. So here goes . . .

My grandfather died a little over a year ago. He was 91 and the last of my family in Germany. My Mother and Aunt died when I was in my teens, my father wasn't around and my Grandfather became my single most significant "Elder". I knew years ago that his death would really put me through it emotioanally. And now a year after his death I still find myself struggling with the loss and the sense of "aloneness" that's been triggered within me. Also, since he was my maternal grandfather I think it's stirred up feelings around the loss of my Mother when I was just 18 years old.

When my grandfather died after a year or so of mourning and missing him I finally realized that it wasn't so much the pain of losing him that I was dealing with, it was the pain of having never really been "seen" by him for who I really am and understood for what I value and strive towards. It's the pain of accepting that so much was left unresolved and so little was said of any real significance or substance. He had the ability to and felt it was his responsibility to comment on and judge every little area and detail of my life. But he never once found it possible to say "I Love You". His conversations were always about what was wrong, missing or false and then from there went to the weather, the food or the soccer game.

I cried when I read about Paul Newman's death. You didn't have to know him personally to know that he was a "good" man. Someone to look up to. I saw a brief interview with one of his daughters the day after his death. All around her was this beautiful air of "peace" and acceptance. I could see that she mourned her father's death because she loved him. But, because she felt seen and loved by him she seemed content with what was shared between them. Her relationship with her father seemed complete and ongoing. This was not the case with my parents or grandparents. I honestly never felt "seen" or "heard" in an essential way by any of them. And I'm certain that it was this longing to be seen and heard, and my desire to find something deeper than was available to me in my environment that led me deeply into my music. Not music in general, but MY music. My music is all about "being" with and exploring and feeling a whole wide range of emotions, of accepting and loving oneselve and creating a safe environment, a loving, compassionate and essential place. It's about embracing whatever exists in this moment in time and space. I can experience the perfection of the Universe and embrace all of my Self and all of Life in the music that comes through me. I realize this may seem to be a rather "large" statement, but is true for me and I feel good about saying it.

Even though my grandfather was the most predictable, old fashioned, judgmental, superstitious and narrow minded man living in Germany; and even though he judged me, never saw me, always criticized me and had the nerve to treat me rudely on and off in the last years of his life; there was something about living under his roof as a child, under his protection; and in his world , even as an adult, that was so safe and comforting. He had the incomprehensible comfort of knowing that what he was doing and how he lived his life was right and was "normal" at the same time. Oh, what a luxury to not question your actions and thought process. To just know that since you're thinking and doing like everyone else, and how your parents thought and did, that it must be the right way to think and do. The comfort of living your life like your parents, peers and neighbors and feeling that it's simply correct and "in order" . . . never questioning . . . That's just amazing. It's almost worth pursuing, it's so attractive. But for some reason, that doesn't really seem like a possibility in my life. Is that something that's true with artists or creative types? I don't know. I feel like a kite with a long ribboned string hanging, blowing wild and free. Occasionally I get caught on something, a bush, a mountain top, a satellite . . . and I'll feel that connection and that tension and soar straight up, sure of myself, higher into the heavens. And then, somehow, unpredictably, I come loose and I'm blown by the wind again, flying randomly, sometimes calmly and gracefully and sometimes wildly and out of control. The need for security and predictability and rootedness can feel pretty intense at times.

There were several times in my life where I could have chosen a more structured path. I could have gone to back to Germany when I was 18 after my Mother died and went to music school and my grandparents would have set me up in an apartment and car and paid for my education. I could have. But no. I always had to be free (I mean "me"). At the age of seven, "Born Free" was one of my favorite songs, with "I Did It My Way" and "To Dream The Impossible Dream" coming in as close seconds. No, "Edelweis" wasn't good enough for me, I flew from Germany to America at the ripe old age of 3 years old and was subject to a whole new world of ambition, risk, adventure and "lyrics". It's not my fault. That's what I tell myself everyday. I look at my grandfather who retired at the age of 55 after working 40 years at Siemens Corporation in Germany. He lived the last 36 years of his life in retirement, comfort and ease. He traveled as he pleased, spent weeks at a time at Spas and Health Resorts, carefully planning his next year of travels, bratwurst and weis beer. He was prudent to cut back on the pork roast, potato dumplings and sweets as he got in his late 80's. He planned everything in advance and kept to his plan. He wasn't hungry for improvisation like I was. He used to tease me about my need for "freedom" and called me a dreamer. It's ironic that he and my grandmother bought me my first piano and paid for all my years of piano lessons. They also instilled in me a deep love, appreciation and respect for nature, beginning in the Bavarian Alps. He told me a few dozen times that if he had my life he wouldn't be able to sleep at night. And yet, I wonder why I have always slept so darn well. I wonder what sleep would be like for me if I had my Grandfathers life and security. I'd probably drop into a comma or die of predicatibility.

He never took out a loan in his entire life. Never. He bought his first house with cash after saving like crazy for 15 years while working at Siemens. He paid for his house in full at the closing. When he first heard about mortgages and credit cards he was totally convinced it was the work of the Devil. And I guess at this point most of us would probably agree. He also warned me to never trust any man with a beard. He couldn't believe I had a car loan. If he new the full extent of my financial stresses throughout my life he'd haunt me from his grave telling me that he can't pass over to the other side because of the unpredictability of my life and income. Well, now I see and understand the value and spiritual significance of "Edelweis". I KNOW that the best things in life are free and organic. I KNOW that there's nothing more rewarding than your child looking up at you with loving trusting eyes, nothing more profound than the sunset blazing, screaming in full glory across the sky, or knowing that you're just happy to BE with your partner, unconditionally, freely and continually. I now KNOW that there's nothing outside of me that I need to be happy. But it's too late to get a job at Siemens and I really love my music work. And to be honest, I wouldn't change a thing (well almost). I dreamed the impossible dream and did it my way in a born free kind of way and now here I am. And you know, no matter where I go . . . there I am.

But . . . my grandfather never got it. He never saw me. He tried, to his credit, but it was just too far from his reality, from his comfort zone. Too far for him to reach. And I never got the satisfaction of his approval, or his saying, "wow, you really accomplished something". Even to hear him say something nice about my music would have been huge, but it never happened. He doubted everything I told him about my career, my accomplishments, awards etc. and he died not understanding what motivates me in my life and what I value. He died without once saying that he loved me. But I know that he did. I know that with some people, the best you can do is see their love bubbling up underneath . . . pushing up their fear, judgments and concerns to the surface, because that's what's between them and expressing their love. Sometimes, especially with family, you have to be the one that gets bigger, even if they're supposed to be older and wiser. You have to get big enough to accept, embrace and love them as they are. I told him I loved him many times in the last years of his life. It came out of my mouth and fell loudly to the floor between us with a thud. The ensuing awkward silence only reassured me that he did hear me and that he loved me too. And in that awkward silence lay the seeds to a life-time worth of music for me to nurture, explore and express. I am grateful.