Your music has an underlying theme of peace and nonviolence, what inspires you to be so peaceful?

S: Growing up in a small town on the Colorado prairie was very influential to me. There wasn’t a lot to do there that didn’t involve nature. We were almost 200 miles from the nearest mountain, and seeing the vast expanse of flat land with a 360º horizon, not to mention the crystal clear night sky, gave me a humbling sense of the vastness of the cosmos and the quiet stillness of nature.

I was also profoundly influenced by my Uncle Al, who had become a Conscientious Objector during WWII, unlike his identical twin brother, my dad, who joined the Army to fight fascism abroad. I could see both sides of the issue, but when my generation’s young men were facing the draft during the Vietnam War, I became more strongly aligned with Uncle Al’s pacifist philosophy and did everything I knew how to protect my partner, Joel, from being prosecuted for draft evasion. Of course, we had the great advantage of being surrounded by other anti-war protestors and pacifists of the 1960s Peace Movement, who collectively made a huge impact on American culture and culture worldwide.

How did discovering the hippies in San Francisco in the 1960s impact your perspective?

S: Coming from that tiny rural town in Colorado, the San Francisco hippie movement could not have been more impactful on me. To say I was overwhelmed would be a gross understatement, especially with my introduction to psychedelic drugs, an experience I was completely unprepared for. On the one hand, I saw that my understanding of reality was fragmentary at best; on the other hand, even though I was traumatized by having my world disintegrating before my very eyes, I deeply appreciated the opportunity to walk through “The Doors of Perception,” to borrow Aldous Huxley’s phrase. The course of my life was forever changed, mostly for the better, I’d say, although I suffered from PTSD for a number of years afterward.

Did you see or attend any of the spiritual groups or new religious movements at that time in San Francisco?

S: I was quite curious about the Hare Krishnas who were omnipresent on the street in the ‘60s, but other than accepting their invitations to their delicious vegetarian suppers a few times, (after which we guests were expected to chant with them for an hour or so), I never actually joined. 

I returned to CU Boulder for a couple semesters after my SF experience, and joined a (so-called) Buddhist group, Nicherin Shoshu (famous for their “Nam yo ho, ringe kyo” chant), but soon became disillusioned with their overt materialism, chanting for specific things/relationships/job opportunities/money/etc., and I soon dropped out. I couldn’t see any relationship whatsoever to the Buddhism I was reading about. I was looking for a form of Zen Buddhism along the lines of what Alan Watts taught, but never found a group to join, so I just studied on my own rather casually, and privately considered myself a Buddhist in as sangha of one.

I have read that you once joined a commune. Could you please share what groups or practices you explored in the 1960s and 70s?

S: After dropping out of college in Boulder for the second time, I lived very briefly in a loosely woven commune of transient hippies in Placitas, New Mexico. But I wouldn’t say I joined it because there was no structure to the group, we all were just camping out in a small enclave of adobe huts formerly inhabited by Mexican goat herders. Then when a torrential rain came along and basically melted what was left of the adobe huts, everyone just scattered to the four winds. My friend Dove and I hitchhiked back to San Francisco, got lost somewhere near the Golden Gate Bridge in the pouring rain, and flagged down a long-haired hippie in an old woody station wagon, who gave us a ride back to my sister’s apartment in The Haight where we were staying. As a thank you we fed him a bowl of brown rice. His name was Joel….and the rest is history. ;-)

When traveling with the Cosmic Man to Mt. Shasta, were you ever involved with the various spiritualists and New Age groups living there?

S: Joel, who at that time was going by the name Gentle Thundering Bison, was very reclusive, in no small part because of the draft issue, so we never got involved in groups of any kind, although he was extremely gregarious and made friends quickly and easily. I basically hid in his shadow, still traumatized by my psychedelic experiences, and generally overwhelmed with culture shock. We did attend an evening gathering in the Mount Shasta home of a legendary New Age “teacher,” an old (we thought then) woman known simply as Pearl. We sat on the floor of her living room, sipping tea and listening to her tales of growing up in the aura of the mountain, where she and her childhood friends regularly saw elves and fairies dancing through the forests and meadows. “They don’t come out much any more,” she said, to our great disappointment.

I know you have experience in the Plum Village tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh. Could you please share with me how you found Buddhism and your perspective on it?

I knew Thich Nhat Hanh’s name, thanks to Joel’s prodigious reading, but it wasn’t until 2011 that I finally understood who he was. By then I had moved back to Colorado and was married to Eric, who was also a reader of Thay’s books, and when he heard Thay was coming to Estes Park he made a beeline there to attend a weekend retreat and hear him give his dharma talks. The video of the event that Eric brought home gave me the answer to my lifelong quest for the teacher of Zen I had always dreamed of, and a direct connection to a form of Buddhism that is not a religion, but a practice. We subsequently went to Thay’s retreats in Blue Cliff and Deer Park, and made our way to Plum Village when we were in France on tour, where we met you.