On the way in the cab, I opened the window to let
the snowflakes drift in and land on the sleeve of my
new black parka. There is just enough time to see
their form before they turn into drops of water.
I know each one is different. I have been told
this when I was a child but somehow in this flurry,
the awe of the moment when I first heard this
impossible thing floods over me. There are so many
snowflakes how can they all be
different. This dream like state lasts from around
26th and 9th to 35th and 3rd.
I press lower level, walk down a corridor and
into a comfortable well appointed loft like basement
with large framed Japanese calligraphy and soft
leather couches. There is a picture of Ken and Tina
Turner and various shots of Guru Mai. It's a very
upscale version of a Chinatown acupuncture clinic with
thousands of herbs and teas behind a counter.
Ken arrives.
Sussan told me to expect a very kind and
interesting man who is sixty-five but looks twenty
years younger. A real healer with deep intuition who
told her things that were uncanny. He gave her some
teas and various esoteric pills and ointments. Our
stomachs have been a little iffy since Turkey (I had
an amoeba). Nothing major but we like getting a tune
up at this time of the year.
I'm sitting on the couch. Ken comes in and shakes
my hand and then sits on the floor in front of me in
between the couch and the coffee table. He is gentle
but firm and decisive. There is a simple clarity about
him. I am immediately comfortable. This is a wise man who
couldn't hurt a flea.
"Fo las three hunder year my family been talking
to body. I star talking when I was three and practice
professionally when I was twelve. Jus like good
musician. Let me touch yo ris and talk body see what
he say. Firs to large intestine. Ah he says I am fine.
Ah berry good. Stron. Heart berry good."
Moving his thumb up and down both wrist and
applying various degrees of pressure he talks to all
the organs, tells me what they say and describes how
they work in his simple but unique language. I have
had quite a bit of advice from Chinese doctors. This
method is much more detailed than any of the others.
"Ha ha, small intestine and gallbladder need
help. Small intestine he say I not getting enough
blood. Small intestine is tube come from under belly
button. He freak out. Get gas if gallbladder not give
enough help. I fix. I give Sussan tea but for you I
give treatment. You want acupuncture?"
He was so disarming I was under his spell and of
course I said yes.
He and his smart looking Austrian ex ballet dancer
assistant usher me into the needle room. "Take off
everything but you underpants."
"I don't wear underpants bad for your sperm count
Kens laugh is friendly and very scrutable. I lie
face down on the massage table and before I can say
Kamikazi, he is sticking needles into me. The first
one goes in to my neck and then goes in some more,
then just as I'm reaching
my threshold of pain he starts to twist the needle and
it goes in some more. My muscle tenses and I stutter a
perplexed, "Isn't that too deep?"
The second needle goes in even deeper.
"Wait a minute Ken Old Boy. I'm not used to
this." But the third and fourth needle are already in.
When the fifth needle hits I issue an unmitigated
"shit," a verbal one. Ken says, "Relax. Body
responding great is blushing red. If it not respond
good would be blue."
I say, "Ken what kind of acupuncture is this?"
"This ancient Kobyachi family deep acupuncture.
I love you, but I don't want you to come back. I cure
you in one time. That why this deeper than other
acupuncture. Jus relax. Your body strong. Now you 54
but look 45. After you feel 38."
Ten more needles go in.
Ken, have you ever read the Marquis de Sade?"
"Haha. This Japanese torture chamber.
Ten more.
"Ken, there is a butcher shop down the street you
could go and work there"
"Haha."
Ten more.
"Ken, you Mother Fucker. How many needles are you
going to put in?
"Almost finish hard par. Nex pa easy piece cake. I
give you 'maca' when you finish. special plant from
Peru. Only grows in Andes at 14,000 feet in freezing
wind where no other plant can grow. It is aphrodisiac
for men and women, increase energy, good mental
clarity. Women can use for hormone imbalance,
fertility, sexual stimulation, hot flash, loss energy.
Men can use for healthy testosterone, seminal fluid
volume, more good sperms."
"But Ken, I don't need any extra help. Do you know
how strong my libido is already? I need help to calm
down. Let me tell you. Do you know when I started to
masturbate? When I was four."
"Haha. Very interesting.
"When I touched myself I saw an orange glow in the
center of my forehead that got brighter and brighter.
And when I first played the note E on the piano, when I was three,
I saw the same orange color! There was no association with girls.
But by the time I was six, I was kissing girls at play time and I was
attracted to the legs of my teacher Miss Albright. I
would masturbate during rest hour and sometimes Miss
Albright would choose me first to go out on the
playground because I was lying so still. But really, I
would be furiously masturbating and I would wish she
would choose me last. Of course there was no sperm,
but I would have to to the the boys room to finish.
There were little six-year-old spasms.
Freud says that boys go into a period of latency
because of the Oedipal desire for the mother and the
conflict with the father. Well, this never happened
to me which is why I could never trust Freud.
"Hahaha. Hmmmm very interesting. I never heard a story like
that before. You must be special. I think sex better
if not too often, one a week good. Better to save
energy for enlightened moment of release."
"I think so too Ken"
"But maca is still good for you you see...haha"
By the end there are a hundred needles (usually there
would be fifteen or twenty).
And I'm glued to the sweat-soaked hole in the head
rest. I could have stopped it but something told me he
knew what he was doing.
"I go you stay later my assisten come take out
needles give you moksa fire".
As I lie there the pain begins to even out but my
neck is getting very sore and every time I go to move
the needles dig in deeper. After about forty-five
minutes in this position I figure I better start to
scream to get someone to come back.
Kens assistant hears me and comes in. "Excuse me
darling, but how much longer before you take out the
needles?"
"Vel you know you von't get zi total effect unless
you let the needles stay in. Even when zdart to take
them out it takes a long time because I give you
moksa fire". Finally she comes back after another
twenty minutes and
pulls out the first needle and in its place she puts a
little cough drop sized piece of incense which starts
to burn upon contact with my skin. "Tell me when it
gets to hot and i take it off."
"It's hot...hot you can take it off now hot hot now
...now it's really hot." "Ok, now I take it off."
She is really very concentrated and we start a
conversation sort of. so where are you from? hot
hot.
"I'm from Austria.
"Hot hot. So is Ken is a student of Guru Mai? Hot."
"No. She just send him patients."
"Hot. How long have you been with him?"
"Three years before I vas in ze art profession but
I was alvays very serious about studying oriental
medicine and I'm alzo going to med school. Ken is
amazing he has cured so many people from cancer and
other diseases the more I'm with him ze more impressed
I am, hot?" "Yes." "Almost finished. I will go then
you can turn over. We're not finished with you".
Even though she said turn over, it never occurred to
me that they would start again. I thought-actually, I
wasn't thinking so straight. Ken must have come in the
room but I didn't notice. He just appeared next to me
and before I thought to think, I felt more needles
going into my arms, stomach, belly button. Many
needles. Then Miss Austria came in to start the fire
treatment while Ken was still sticking me like a
Japanese voodoo doll. As he started with my eyelids,
eyebrows, third eye and behind the ears; I decided to
distract myself by telling them the story of Wanda Von
Sacher Masoc.
"Hey Miss Austria, have you ever heard of Wanda
Von Sacher Masoc?"
"Vel I have heard the name but..."
"Well you know everyone knows about Sadism,
especially you and Ken, but not that many people know
about Masoc; the other side of the equation. Wanda
Sacher was a young poet in her early teens in Vienna
at the turn of the century. She was hired by an older
woman to write love letters to a man. The woman was in
love with the budding poet Masoc. But Masoc found out
and fell in love with Wanda. They got married and had
two children. Wanda didn't know until after the
marriage that Masoc had a fetish.
In order to write, he need to be hit with a
leather strap by a woman dressed only in a fur coat
and high heels.
Wanda writes magnificently about this in her
memoirs. She writes in the high German romantic style
like Novalis and Goeth. She is always pure and
sublime.
Masoc needed to publish to support the family, so
she had no choice. It's not really an x-rated film at
all, it's PG. Masoc did go on to write one of the
seminal books of the period, "Venus in Furs," which
earned him the second billing with de Sade...hot hot
hot hot hot hot!!!!!"

This actually happened yesterday and today I feel
amazing really. You should go to Ken ASAP.
Ken Kobyashi 145 east 35th st.

From the moment her hands touched the piano her fingers played notes that weren't there, notes in between the black keys and the white keys; notes carved directly into the unknown. There, in the urgency of that very first attack she resumed her primordial battle with chaos and harmony - The Ultimate Harmony - the chord that first started the universe and that is still moving through all of us. She is a medium and warrior, a woman with an ancient soul capable of bending the rigid chromatic tuning of the ultimate western instrument into an eastern one by creating undulating collisions. Notes collide at the edges of her elliptical phrases and suns are born. She is juggling waves of sound plasma. Flowing, shifting multidimensional webs and warps of energy that are grounded in the earth and far beyond the earth's gravity. She is channeling from above and below at the same time but there is no above and no below. She is an ethereal antenna in a fluid state of grace and balance. Her hands are magnets shifting over the keys; pulling the energy up from the molten core of the planet - up through us all and back to the cosmos. Fragile and grounded at-once, the timeless lightness of her presence is poised calmly above an immense physical and metaphysical catharsis.

Ravi, the torch bearer, the flames and sparks spitting for the mouth of his great volcanic mother and the spirit of his father. Direct and articulate he does not mince words or notes. The graceful inheritor of this great legacy. A legacy that is alive and burning in his hands. And the startling and thrilling realization that this was so ripped through the crowd, the audience (yes, this was a true Audience) ripped into each soul at Royce Hall. The transcendent lyricism, the firm focus, the searching, the risks, the fearless fury, the resonance, the intonation, the syntax. I told Sussan on the way home that he was named after Ravi Shankar and that it felt like the son of a great Indian musician paying homage to his father and carrying his tradition forward. So many people were influenced by Coltrane and so many have tried to play like him over the years that it has become tiring and hard to listen to. But last night there was an uncanny, undeniable genetic, transmission and everyone felt it. Wave after wave, on and on, deeper and deeper it came down.

Reggie Workman played truth serum mined directly from the world of Sub-subconscious, subliminal, sublime subtext. He played like a great editor responding to Alice and Ravi's waves of phrases with his wisdom. Answers made from haunting calligraphic strokes. Sometimes his remarks were parenthetical and some times they answered questions before they were asked. He bent low over the bass his ear to the body even when playing high up the neck. He was the rudder on this sacred vessel moving through space that never needed to drop anchor.

Trevor Lawrence Jr. was on drums subbing for Jeff "Tain" Watts and he played with great sensitivity maturity and attention. He was taking the pulse as much as he was giving it. He was understated and he understood.

I first met Reggie Workman in 1966 in a club called The Royal Arms. I was under age but I had phony ID and I took my home work with me. I was with my cousin Amy Darlich who was a girl Jazz prodigy she had played on The Tonight Show and she knew Reggie. Reggie was playing with Herbie Mann. Amy brought me back stage and sat me down next to Reggie and he started to speak to me as if he already knew me. He was very kind and friendly but it was not getting to know you talk. He laid it on me then and there. No one had ever spoken to me like that before and I was somehow profoundly changed after that meeting. Years later I was doing a solo performance in New York at the Greenwich House and I was opening for Reggie's band. I hadn't seen him in 17 years but there was the same instantaneous rapport. Later he called me to work on a project and I took the chance of asking him if he wanted to play a concert with Sussan and me at The Anchorage in Brooklyn organized by Creative Time. They were also going to show a film we did the music for called "Life Without Death' made by Frank Cole who crossed the Sahara by him self with a 16-mm rewind camera with no batteries. Our band at the time was with Will Calhoun and Doug Wimbish. Sussan also invited Vernon Reid to play and it was the first time they had gotten back together. We loved working with Reggie and we had a chance to invite him to Finland to the Tempere Festival and also to Morocco for the Gnawa festival it was the first time he had set foot on the African continent and he had an amazing time in Morocco. After that I moved to LA to put in another two years working for The Entertainment Wing of the Pentagon and we fell out of touch.

Last January (2006) Sussan had a concert with Jan Kaczmarek and a symphony orchestra at Royce Hall so we booked tickets right away for the Alice concert because we knew we would still be in town. Then we found out Reggie was playing and the day before and we called him up. He invited us back stage and to the after party at the W given by his nephew the drummer Eric Benson. It was wonderful to meet all of Reggie's family who had come for the show and every one was in an altered state...a combination of very high and very satisfied and very deep. I got a chance to thank Ravi for the concert and I told him that I had seen him on stage two times. The first one was very unusual. It was the opening the Jiva Nanda Yoga center in New York in the mid 90s. Sting played a set and then Laswell had thrown together a DJ set and Sussan did a cameo. Then Ravi was supposed to play over the DJ other musicians and he stood on stage with his soprano for forty-five minutes waiting for the right moment to enter into the music but it never came. He never felt inspired. So he just kept standing there. He never played a note. And watching him in that fragile state of anticipation was fascinating. It was the most interesting part of the night. It was then I knew we could expect great things from him. When I reminded him of that moment last night he laughed and said: "Sometimes you gotta use silence". Then he told me he had problems with the show at Royce Hall. He felt some of his phrasing was off and the on stage monitors were bad. He said "But you can't let it get to you, you just have to keep on reaching for the next thing". I told him that I didn't hear one phrase that was out all night and to make him feel better I told him he was just paranoid. Which he thought was funny. Normally telling someone they are paranoid does not make them feel better but he did laugh and I think it worked. Sussan and I both made him feel better about the sound on stage too. She has had three shows there in the last three years and the sound check last year totally exhausted her; it was three hours long and still not right. Sussan had a long talk with Ravi, she was totally in the vibe and being there with her and Garby Leon made the whole night that much deeper. I could feel her soaking it up with her eyes closes and head thrown back mesmerized... What a night.