West Loop Chicago The first song I wrote. When I was a saxophone player in the 60's and working as a salesman during the day, driving along between calls, sometimes driving long distances in my clapped out Mini Countryman, powder blue with maple wood trimmings a la 1940's American station wagons, and rather prone to breaking down when snow and ice packed around the distributor, I would try to write songs - Nada, nothing came. And with a gap of some forty five years, while staying with Nischal Kapoor and his wife in their apartment in West Loop, Chicago, to my own astonishment this popped out in the summer of 2010:

Chorus West Loop Chicago on a summerʼs day E7 CMaj7 Balmy breezes blowinʼ my way GMaj7 DMaj7 Watchinʼ the sunʼs rays touch the bay E7 CMaj7 Watchinʼ my thoughts blow away GMaj7 DMaj7

Verse In the silence between two waves A condition of complete simplicity Reading between the lines Finding out what yogis seek

Verse Costing not less than everything Is the only price to pay She is Vira Mata She takes our fears away

Verse Sheʼs not a concept of the mind Sheʼs the Mother of the brave She can't be known by the coward or the fool Sheʼs the truth that millions seek

In the Calm Before the Storm Here's another that wrote itself. I was walking from a high school on Stanton Street on New York's Lower East Side where I'd been showing mostly Chinese students Sahaja Meditation to HealthCorps Head Offices located on Sixth Avenue. As I was walking along, I pass a Drag club next door to a Hookah bar - playfully, I combined the two to the "downtown drag and hookah bar". I liked the rhythmic feel of that as I said it aloud. Then, looking around at the passersby I could see that their attention was all over the place, mostly in places where it shouldn't be, and the writing itself was a doddle after that:

In the calm before the storm by the downtown drag and hookah bar DMaj7 F#m7 Attention was where it shouldn’t be, some of us have far to go Eb7 C7 DMaj7 In the city of discretion, with some sort of intercession GMaj7 Gm7 On the swan’s back of hamsa a global nation of oneness will rise C7 D7

There’s a lot of kids seeing blindly who don’t take at all kindly DMaj7 F#m7 To having the lights turned on in the daylight hours Eb7 C7 DMaj7 In the city of discretion, with some sort of intercession GMaj7 Gm7 On the swan’s back of hamsa a global nation of oneness will rise C7 D7

Soon across our great nation is a coming invocation A tsunami of love is coming our way In the city of discretion, with some sort of intercession On the swan’s back of hamsa a global nation of oneness will rise

It’ll be a time of celebration, Lady Liberty will lead the nation With peace and harmony here to stay In the city of discretion, with some sort of intercession On the swan’s back of hamsa a global nation of oneness will rise

PS When I wrote the song in October 2010, the final line was: "On a swan’s back celebration we will rise". I never really liked it. New York (and Vancouver too) is the hamsa of the planet but celebration didn't feel right. So it was only now, seven years later, in posting this, the answer appeared - I'm not sure it's as good as it can be and if something better emerges I'll change it again. If anyone sees how to improve it, plase feel free to suggest it. Some criticize this song, probably rightly, it has no chorus, no verses, no bridge, no middle eight etc but those sort of things never bothered me. I like it - amen! And I'm grateful to Shri Mataji for the inspiration. By the way, when I lived in Chelsea, London, there was an antiquarian bookshop beneath my flat, owned by a lovely old Jewish couple. I bought a couple of prints from them, made in the 1950's from William Blake's original plates then hand colored. One, the title page for a book of illustrations of Thomas Grey's poems. It had a man, naked on the back of a swan, a lyre in one hand, talking off upwards like a jumbo jet. When I bought it, I had no idea of the reference - later I heard Shri Mataji on a recorded talk speak about the swan and hamsa.

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