Sunday, December 20, 2015

Article 8: Margaret Cardwell



I met Margaret Cardwell in the summer of 1974, in an Urbana Park District extension building, two blocks from where I lived.  She was the instructor for my beginning ceramics class.  The ceramics studio occupied a single classroom in the old school building then owned by the Park District.  I had not taken a class in any visual art since my sixth-grade art class, so I had no idea what working with clay would be like.

I remember the studio was filled with equipment--6 or 8 kick-wheels, tables for hand-building, 2 electric kilns, many 5-gallon buckets filled with glazes, sinks, storage space for large packages of clay and rows of shelves for clay tools and unfinished projects.  It was foreign and intimidating to me, and I easily could have skipped the second class had it not been for Margaret's encouragement, kindness, and expertise.  Learning to throw a piece of clay begins with a process called "centering," which is harder than it looks.  The irony was not lost on me, at a time when I was struggling to "center" my life.  If I could only center this chunk of clay and make something of it, maybe my life would follow suit.

Having done wheel-throwing now for many years, I look back on those first few weeks with a bit of awe.  The clay was gritty, the old kick-wheels were hard to turn at a steady speed, and we were elbow-to-elbow in an over-crowded classroom, but somehow Margaret taught all of us to make presentable pots.  She mixed in some hand-building projects as well, such as working with clay slabs and hand-rolled coils, and by the third week, I couldn't wait to get to class.  One night in class, Margaret approached me and, out of the clear blue, asked if I'd be available to join her and her husband, John, and two of their friends for dinner the following Saturday.  I was quite surprised but readily accepted.

Margaret and John lived in a beautiful home, about twelve miles west of Champaign-Urbana near Lake of the Woods Forest Preserve.  They had converted their garage into a studio for Margaret, but I don't actually remember any ceramics equipment there.  She was really an all-around visual artist, for she did oil painting, watercolors, collages, macrame and--the most surprising--large metal sculptures.  Next to three or four easels, you could see her acetylene tank and torch.  Their home was filled with a lot of incredible artwork--mostly her paintings, sculptures, macrame pieces and ceramic pots.  I don't think she owned a dish or plate that she had not made. And, oh, by the way--she was the first gourmet cook I ever met!  Her dinners were exquisite.

Margaret and John were from California but spent years in Mexico and Positano, Italy, as Margaret dedicated her life to art and pottery.  John spent his time writing and eventually became an English professor.  (He always reminded me a little of Ernest Hemingway--tall, full gray-white beard, literate and articulate.)  They moved to the Champaign-Urbana area when John got a job at Parkland Junior College to teach English.  They were in their early 50's when I met them, and it was the second career for each of them.

Over the next two years I got to be quite close to Margaret and John.  I helped them plant their huge garden and partook in many wonderful meals and evening-long conversations with them.  I thought of them as having the gold standard in marriage relationships, and I still think that to this day.  At the center of that relationship was a constant respect and interest in each other, always with kind words and deeds.  Once I asked them if they ever got angry at each other, for I had never seen it.  After careful thought, Margaret responded, "Well, there was the time I made a batch of chocolate chip cookies and set them out to cool while I went to class.  John had eaten all of them by the time I got home.  I was pretty mad at him then."  I just nodded and smiled.

Margaret pushed me to create visual art.  Although one might argue that guitar playing is an art form involving one's hands, I really had never used my hands in creating a visual art before I met Margaret.  Ceramics is like painting, sculpture, macrame and drawing, in that you envision the finished object that people will view, and then you try to make it.  Margaret was very patient and encouraging in her teaching, but she also pushed me to be a good potter, giving me techniques that she didn't teach in her classes.  Of course, unlike most of the students, I had the benefit of seeing hundreds of things that she had made, so I asked questions others didn't know to ask.

Part of learning to be a better potter was learning how to run a ceramics studio.  In addition to the classes, a pottery club of 35-40 people used all the studio's facilities.  Only four people, including Margaret, were in charge of running the studio, but she encouraged me to be the fifth person.  I joined the management team and learned how to mix glazes, stack and unstack the kilns, and organize the shelves for classes.  In turn, I learned much more about ceramics than most of the other students.

There is a distinction to be drawn between the mentoring I've received from other instructors in California (especially Jill Getzan, an amazing ceramics artist and dear friend) and the frequent push I received from Margaret while I was first learning ceramics.  I can't overstate the importance Margaret played in my life during those years.  Working in clay was a stabilizing force for me.  When she pushed me to create visual art, Margaret helped me focus all my attention on what I was making at the moment.  She pushed me to focus on art and other important things in life.  That is why she is on my remarkable person list.

And Finally....  Margaret Cardwell passed away on December 18, 2010, at the age of 92.  I last saw her and John in the fall of 1980, when I visited them in Illinois.  We went to the Covered Bridge Festival in Indiana during that visit, and I have a beautiful photo of them from that day.  Although I lost touch with Margaret and John after that visit, I still have all the ceramic pieces I made in her classes, and I still think about the remarkable things they did for me.

Article 9: Stephen W. Porges



I met Steve Porges on a volleyball court in the summer of 1974.  I ran a summer outdoor league in Urbana, Illinois, and after the final matches were concluded, he asked if I would like to join their co-ed team to play in the upcoming fall indoor league in Champaign.  His team was comprised mostly of people from the University of Illinois Psychology Department, and it included his wife, Sue Carter.  Over the next two years, our team won five of the six park district leagues that we entered.  Steve and I were the big hitters and blockers, and our styles complemented each other, since he is left-handed and I am right-handed.  We could both jump well and were serious competitors, and we both thoroughly loved the sport.

As with many of the teams in those leagues, the tradition after each evening's matches was to grab a pizza and beer at the closest pizza restaurant, so we often sat together and talked for an hour after our matches.  That is how our friendship developed beyond being volleyball court mates.  One thing that set Steve apart from most of the other people was that he was so engaging and present.  He asked questions about me and my life, and he listened intently.  Years later I realized that people in my new home, California, get to know each other primarily by doing things together, while people in the Midwest get to know each other through talking and listening.  Steve was one of the great "listeners" in my life.

When I look back on the close friendship we developed during my last two years in Illinois, it isn't at all surprising to me.  We had both grown up Jewish and easily expressed our emotions and feelings, while enjoying a wry sense of humor.  We were both greatly influenced by music--Steve had been a very good classical clarinetist, and I had been in a folk band and was a songwriter.  We both loved volleyball and played a LOT of it during those two years--always on the same team.  And we both had found our professional callings in life--he as a neuropsychologist and I as a computer systems analyst.  We both loved talking about our work.

To begin to understand the impact that Steve has had on my life, I should say some things about his career and work.  Steve is probably the most intelligent person I've ever known well.  He currently holds the position of Distinguished University Scientist at Indiana University and is a part time Professor of Psychiatry at the University of North Carolina.  He is Professor Emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago and at the University of Maryland.  He's a former recipient of a National Institute of Mental Health Research Scientist Development Award and has published over 200 peer-reviewed scientific papers across an amazing number of disciplines, including anesthesiology, critical care medicine, ergonomics, exercise physiology, gerontology, neurology, obstetrics, pediatrics, psychiatry, psychology, space medicine and substance abuse.  In one interview of Steve a couple years ago (from which I took much of this biographical information), neuropsychologist Rick Hanson commented that, if a Nobel Prize were awarded in psychology, Steve would certainly have been a recipient by now.

To quote from the biography in Rick Hanson's "Hardwiring Happiness" series of interviews, "In 1994 [Steve] proposed the Polyvagal Theory, a theory that links the evolution of the vertebrate autonomic nervous system to the emergence of social behavior.  The theory provides insights into the mechanisms mediating symptoms observed in several behavioral, psychiatric, and physical disorders.  The theory...provides a theoretical perspective to study and to treat stress and trauma."  The titles of his two most recent books indicate the breadth and importance of Steve's work.  The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication and Self-regulation was published in 2011, and Clinical Applications of the Polyvagal Theory: The Transformative Power of Feeling Safe was published in 2013.

Steve was certainly laying the groundwork for his Polyvagal Theory in the years that I first knew him.  Many of our conversations included discussions about his initial theories linking physiology and behavior.  I recall discussing how he wanted to analyze the complex wave that is comprised of a person's vagus nerve signal and heart rate, break down that wave into its component frequencies, associate those frequencies with different afflictions, such as hypertension and autism, and then be able to predict and treat those afflictions if the frequencies were abnormal, even in newborns!  He told me once that he enjoyed discussing his theories with me because (a) I understood what he was saying, (b) I challenged him by asking questions and (c) I was not an academician.

I think Steve's greatest ability as a psychologist and theoretician is the far-reaching, interdisciplinary quality of his work.  His theories are not simply scientific postulations, but they have immense clinical and practical value in today's world.  To be successful in his research, Steve has had to be very good in a lot of disciplines, and one of those, interestingly, is mathematics. Important to the success of his research has been his "intuitive math abilities," as he likes to say.

Soon after we met, he told me that he had just learned about the Fourier transform, which (simply put) is a mathematical tool that decomposes a signal into its component frequencies, similar to breaking down a musical chord into its component notes.  In his research, Steve had been forced to re-invent auto- and cross-correlations, which is just one step away from the Fourier transform frequency extraction method, because he had never heard of Fourier transforms!  (Well, who has except for a mathematician?)  As a person who majored in math, that's pretty amazing to me.

In looking back over our years of friendship, it was difficult for me to define exactly how Steve changed the course of my life, mostly because the influences were complex and not typical of any relationship.  The impact of those influences has taken a lifetime to emerge, unlike the influences of other remarkable people I've known.  But these two influences have, indeed, changed my life greatly.

Steve pushed me to always maintain diverse interests. This may seem like an odd way to influence another person's life, but Steve was the first one to make me fully aware that you are healthier when you actively nourish all parts of your life.  Steve saw me through some difficult times, but amid each emotional upheaval, he pushed me to see the importance and value of different parts of me.  He urged me to integrate those interests and activities, so I would not be consumed by the loss of any one of them.  He would ask me about my music, my sports activities, my computer projects, my reading, my ceramics, my physical health, my relationships.  If I were feeling down about something, he'd urge me to go play volleyball.  If work wasn't going well, he'd urge me to write a new song.  If I were grappling with a philosophical question, he'd encourage me to work it out in the ceramics studio.

I shared a lot of experiences with Steve that led me to realize how important diverse interests are in a person's life--from competing together in volleyball to discussing a computer technique over lunch, from seeing violinist Yehudi Menuhin at the San Francisco Symphony (while he and Sue were on sabbatical at Stanford University in 1981) to attending a lecture he gave in a psychology class at U.C. Davis.  I always admired that Steve could pay such careful attention to each part of his life.

For many years I've been told by people that I have an inordinate number of interests and activities.  Steve pushed me to keep those interests alive, in effect creating my own health safety net.  It goes further than having a busy lifestyle.  If one can be deeply involved in diverse things, then life changes, such as retirement, need not be so challenging.

Integrating and nourishing my diverse interests led to the second influence Steve has had on me.

Steve pushed me to be more resilient.  Steve was really the first person to make me aware that mental health, emotional health, and physical health are deeply connected.  (I may even add "spiritual" health.)  He would ask, "Are you taking care of yourself?"  He wasn't asking if I was taking my vitamins; he was inquiring whether I was paying attention to and taking care of all the parts of me.  I think his profound empathy and concern for other people has led him on a natural path in developing his Polyvagal Theory, which opens doors to exploring the range of human behavior when a person feels "safe," not safety from being isolated, but safety while interacting with other people.  In one interview, Steve stated, "We make the world better by making people safer."

Steve has pushed me towards safe places.  I remember telling him once in a phone conversation that I was feeling down about something, and an hour later he showed up at my door with two full bags of groceries, just to make sure I was eating well.  Who even thinks to do that for someone, much less carries through on the thought?  That night I ate well and felt better.

Resilience is the ability to stabilize oneself after a challenge.  I am still working on that set of skills, as we all are.  One of my favorite quotes from Steve is, "Healthy steady states are not steady," so we can expect life to throw us challenges.  As part of my physical health issues in the last twelve years, I have sought and received the support of many others, especially my wife, Suzanne, and through those experiences my resilience has improved.  There was a time in my life when I was a lot less resilient, but Steve was the first to push me towards more resilience.

And Finally... In this article I have not said much about Steve's wife, Sue Carter, who also became a dear friend of mine.  To quote a Wikipedia article on her, she "is a biologist and behavioral neurobiol-ogist.  She is an internationally recognized expert in behavioral neuroendocrinology.  In 2014 she was appointed Director of The Kinsey Institute and Rudy Professor of Biology at Indiana University.  Dr. Carter was the first person to identify the physiological mechanisms responsible for social monogamy."  She was also the first to discover the relationship between oxytocin and social behavior.

Sue is such a warm, modest person that it was a long time before I discovered how highly regarded and accomplished she is in her field.  I was at Steve's and Sue's home one Saturday afternoon when I asked what they were doing that evening.  She responded that Masters and Johnson were joining them for dinner!  (I offered to bring the wine, but she said they had that covered.)  Now she's head of the Kinsey Institute, which was founded in 1947 by Dr. Alfred Kinsey (whose research was the basis for the Kinsey Reports).

My final words about Steve refer back to my article on Gary Usher in this series, where I mention that my search for a life's philosophy was first influenced by Gary.  For all practical purposes, that search lasted for nine years and culminated in a brief conversation that Steve and I had in a San Francisco deli one night, before going to the symphony.  We often discussed philosophical questions, and Steve knew I was searching for my "meaning in life," my theory to explain the reasons for living.

Suddenly, I got it, as simple as it could be.  I said, "Somehow life has always been a conflict for me between pursuing what I wanted to do and helping others.  Now I see that they have to work together.  The secret of life is to be the best you can be and to do good for others.  Isn't that right!?"  Steve looked up and replied, "Yes, that's right.  Would you pass the mustard?"

Friday, December 18, 2015

Defining A "Remarkable Person"

Image from Yahoo.com

All of us have known people we consider to be remarkable.  Some people have done remarkable things, while others have remarkable qualities about them.  My life has been filled with people who, in one way or another, were remarkable to me.  For the sake of this set of writings, I narrow my definition of the phrase, "remarkable person," to be someone who went out of their way to willfully and intentionally change the course of my life for the better.  Many people have influenced my life, but only a few have intentionally changed my "life path" by their words and actions.  All of the remarkable people I've known have pushed me to change in significant ways.  These writings are about them.

When I say that a person "went out of their way," I don't mean that it was an inconvenience for them.  Perhaps a more accurate statement would be that they chose to spend time with me (and I with them), which led to my learning things that I would have learned from no one else--maybe ever.

As a metaphor for how each of these people influenced me, imagine yourself sitting alone in a rowboat, paddling diligently toward an inviting, unknown, obscure shore.  Suddenly there is a gentle (or strong) wind that changes your direction and gives you reason and inspiration to go that way.  You don't fight against the wind, because the direction seems right to you.  You trust the wind.

That is how these remarkable people have affected my life.  In fact, most of these people certainly affected the direction of many lives.  What is truly remarkable is that they all affected mine.

The Distinction Between Great Friends, Mentors and Remarkable People

In my life I've had an inordinate number of great friends.  These are people with whom I've shared a deep love and many, many life-changing experiences.  They are people with whom I stood on an "equal" footing, even though at any moment, by the very nature of friendships, one of us might be reaping more benefit than the other.

There is an element of time with a great friendship.  It not only takes time to develop, but a great friendship also takes time to flourish and even to die.  I've never had a great friendship where I knew the person for less than a year, although by one year's time, I usually know such a friendship is developing.  Good friendships become great friendships when you've devoted sufficient time to know each other very well.  For me that has always involved a lot of conversation and a willingness from both of us to let our vulnerabilities show.

Seldom do great friendships involve mentoring, although a mentor can evolve into a great friend.  I've had many wonderful mentors who did not turn into "great friends," either because we did not ever have an "equals" relationship or because we did not spend enough time together as "equals."  My mentors were all very good teachers, and I benefited from their wisdom and talent in countless ways.

Curiously, a remarkable person (in the context of these writings) can be a great friend, a mentor, both or neither.  It is important to make that distinction.  The common thread was that each remarkable person pushed me in a new direction, for my benefit alone.  Sometimes we became great friends, and sometimes there was a mentoring relationship--but in two or three cases there was neither.

My List Of Remarkable People

I first made my list of remarkable people in 1980, while I was reading G. I. Gurdjieff's Meetings With Remarkable Men.  Since then, over the course of 35 years, I have refined the concept very little, although I have added two people to and removed two people from the original list. (The two people removed from the list turned into great friends but did not, alas, change the path of my life.)

For a long time I wondered why I hadn't added others to the list, since the last person was added in about 1990.  Then the realization came to me that I didn't need more remarkable people in my life, because they had all, cumulatively, pushed me in the right direction and I had finished my formative changes.  Not coincidentally, 1990 was when I first realized that I was a happy person.  In retrospect, my happiness was the sum of the changes these people had brought into my life.

Here is a list of the twelve remarkable people I've known.  They are listed in chronological order, by when they first greatly influenced my life in remarkable ways.  Of the twelve people, nine are already deceased, as of the summer of 2021.  Amazingly, seven of them achieved a notable degree of "fame" in their lifetimes and were published writers of one type or another.
  • Gerard Aaron Cowan (businessman, my father, deceased)
  • Paul Dale Anderson (artist, writer, actor, great friend, deceased)
  • Paul Alan Friedman (university professor, writer, deceased)
  • Daniel Grayling Fogelberg (singer-songwriter, artist, great friend, deceased)
  • W. Edward Harris (Unitarian minister, writer, poet, civil rights activist, deceased)
  • Thomas Burke Bishop, Jr. (singer-songwriter, writer, actor, playwright, great friend)
  • Gary Lee Usher (music producer, songwriter, deceased)
  • Margaret Cardwell (ceramics artist, painter, sculptor, great friend, deceased)
  • Stephen W. Porges (distinguished scientist, university professor, writer, great friend)
  • Michael Edward Cowan (businessman, my brother, great friend, deceased)
  • Chester M Ratliff (computer analyst, great friend)
  • Gail Montgomery (psychologist, shaman, deceased)
I will profile each of these people in subsequent articles.  For many, the exact dates of contact are unclear, although the approximations are quite close to the actual dates.  I especially want to define how each person changed the direction of my life--how I was forever changed by knowing the person.  I am honored to be able to talk about them.

Wednesday, December 16, 2015

Article 7: Gary Lee Usher


 
I met Gary Usher in the early spring of 1972.  He was hired by Electra Records to produce our group's album, The Ship: A Contemporary Folk Music Journey. We were delighted that someone of Gary's experience in the music business was going to be producing our album, for he was a well-known songwriter and producer.  He collaborated with Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys on many songs, including "409" and "In My Room", and he produced albums for The Beach Boys and The Byrds, along with many other "surfer" and "hot rod" bands.  He also discovered the comedy group, The Firesign Theatre.

After it was announced that Gary would be producing our album, he made a trip to Urbana, Illinois, to meet us.  The entire group and several other people, including our managers, Roger Francisco and Peter Berkow, were gathered at Rofran Studios late one afternoon to greet Gary.  When he entered the studio, he chatted with everyone for half an hour and then suggested that we go have dinner and see a movie ("A Clockwork Orange").  I had stayed on the periphery of the conversation, for I was a bit overwhelmed by the whole situation.  As everyone filed out of the studio, he hung back and walked over to me.  Only I heard him say, "When you regain your self-confidence, you're going to be really something."  Just those words and nothing more, and we walked out together.

In April of that year, Gary came back to Urbana to hear the group perform The Ship to a sold-out concert hall at Krannert Center for the Performing Arts.  Over 2,000 people saw that concert, and it was probably the best we'd ever performed the folk opera.  In May we hit the road for Los Angeles, where we were to spend six weeks recording the album at Elektra Recording Studios.  We arrived in L.A. on a Friday afternoon and were invited to visit Gary at his home that night.  There we spent a couple of hours discussing what to expect at the recording sessions, which were to begin the following Monday.  Harry Chapin would be recording in the studio during the day, and our sessions would be after his from 4:00 pm to midnight, five days a week.  (His cello player, Tim Scott, was on our album.)  In the studio next to ours, Bread would be recording "Guitar Man".  We were very excited about what lay ahead.  As we were leaving, Gary took me and my writing partner, Albert Melshenker, aside and invited us to come to dinner at his home the following night.

Gary had a way of making everyone feel special.  He would somehow try to connect with each person in a particular way.  (Mark Hamby, maybe the most athletic of us guys in The Ship, was invited to a game of flag football on Sunday of that weekend.  I remember that Lee Majors was part of that game.)  Well, Mel and I were very happy to attend dinner with Gary Usher.  On that evening, it was just the four of us, including Gary's wife, Bonnie.  She was a lovely, gracious person, but our attention was clearly on Gary, who was seated across the large table from us.  When dinner was over, Bonnie cleared the dishes and did not return for the rest of the evening.  I think Mel and I both wondered what was in store for us.

Gary continued with the following: "I want to tell you a parable and ask you a question, and then I'd like you to answer the first thing that comes into your mind.  Imagine that you are at the bottom of a deep pit with many other people.  All you can see above you is blue sky, and you don't know what is outside the pit.  The walls are almost impossible to climb, and for many days people try to climb out--either alone or with the help of others--with no success.  Finally, you are the first to reach the top and climb out."  During the entire recitation, Gary had been looking directly at me, but at that moment he snapped his fingers, pointed to Mel and asked, "What's the first thing you do?"  Mel immediately replied, "I look around to see what's there."  Then Gary pointed to me and asked the same question.  I replied, "I reach down for the next person."  I had given it no thought; the answer was just there.  Gary pointed to me and said, "You're right.  Now we can begin the rest of the evening."

Gary told us that he'd created a concept album, and we, along with one other person, would be the first to hear it in its entirety.  At that moment, as if on cue, the front doorbell rang, and in walked a beautiful woman, who Gary introduced as "a neighbor who does the Maybelline eye makeup commercials."  Albert and I probably thought the same thing--this isn't Illinois any longer.

I should describe Gary's living room, where we were to listen to the recording.  It was a large room with hardwood floors, about 20' x 40' in size, high ceilings and a very big fireplace on one long wall, opposite a wall of sliding glass doors that led to the garden.  In each of the four corners of the room stood a huge audio speaker tower.  Suspended from the ceiling, facing the fireplace, was a six-foot-wide (very silent) porch swing, and on the floor between the swing and fireplace was a white bear rug.  Except for a couple of incidental chairs, that's all the room contained.

We were already out of our comfort zone when Gary gave us his instructions.  He had brought out a large, scrapbook-like manuscript and said he'd like us to lie down in front of the fire and read the book, pausing at each point that said "STOP FOR NEXT SONG."  To enhance the experience, he wanted us to smoke some marijuana first, so we all did that, chatted for 10 minutes until we were first feeling its effects, and then lay down and began to read.  Gary sat on the swing while we lay facing the fireplace, book in front of us.  If you've ever tried to read something while you're stoned (and I admit it's been well over 30 years since last I tried), you know that it's a real chore.  Each of us struggled through the pages, and when we reached a stopping point, Gary would stand up, walk to a hidden sound system on one side of the room, and play the next song.

What we heard that night was extraordinary--quadraphonic sound with lush, layered vocals and all the instruments played by Gary.  It was my first experience with "surround sound."  Here we were in Los Angeles to record a concept album, and he had labored for years to make his own concept album, with an accompanying book!  I have since learned that what he played for us were the demo tapes of an album called Beyond A Shadow Of Doubt, but the project was never finished.  As I recall, it was the story of a person's journey into a foreign, Hobbit-like land, complete with adventures, challenges, and morals.  I don't believe the book was illustrated, but Gary did show us extensive architectural drawings afterward that depicted the civilization he'd created.

I think Mel was only too happy to get out of there, but I could have talked with Gary all night.  On the way back to our motel, we joked about events of the evening, but I had been forever affected by the experience.  What had really impacted me was the parable.  Gary knew what I would answer, because it was his answer also.  I have serious doubts that we would have been witness to his project, had I not answered his question in that way.

Gary pushed me to explore metaphysics and philosophies.  Two days later we began recording our album.  During that six-week marathon, it was not the time or the place to have in-depth conversations with Gary, but during the first week he pushed me in a surprising direction, by telling me that I should read The Morning Of The Magicians, by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier.  I immediately got the book and began reading about occult and paranormal phenomena--metaphysics.  It was a whole new world to me.

Gary's message, in several brief conversations, was not that I should adopt the metaphysical ideas and beliefs as my own, but that I should be aware of them.  That year was the beginning of nine years of intense philosophical exploration for me.  I suppose I can say that I was "searching for the meaning of life," but that's over-simplistic.  I was looking for a belief system--a way to conduct one's life--that worked for me.  Gary planted the seeds and gave me a push to do that exploration.

During those eight years I searched through many disparate philosophies, including metaphysics, Buddhism, the Hawaiian Huna religion, Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged (which is a philosophy unto itself), Hinduism, and especially G. I. Gurdjieff's teachings (which grew out of his Meetings With Remarkable Men book).  I read "New Age" books and "Old Age" books.  I experienced a prior-life regression hypnosis, which was really quite enjoyable and revealing.  Mostly, I talked with countless people about their beliefs.  Gary really opened the door to that exploration.

[In my article on Stephen Porges, I'll discuss the de facto end to that exploration.]

Gary pushed me to be observant.  If there's one characteristic that described Gary Usher, it was that he was observant of others, which is a great irony, because he did not "get" what we really wanted to do on our album.  Roger Francisco and Billy Panda had to remix the tracks, once we'd heard the finished product.  Gary's vision was to over-produce the songs with accompanying strings and all sorts of vocal effects--much like the album from his own project; our vision was to do a folk album with no added effects.

But on a personal level, Gary was as observant and intuitive as anyone I've ever met. By nature he was quiet, but he watched people intently.  That really interested me.  I was usually a quiet person from introspection; what if I was a quiet person from observation of others?  That seemed to be an approach that was consistent with my search for a personal belief system.  The transition from being centered on self to observing those around me was further developed in the books I read the next few years, but the start of that transition was with Gary.  He did see my struggles with self-confidence, from the day he met me, and he encouraged me in a direction that restored my self-confidence.  That transition begins in looking outside yourself, not in constantly trying to correct something inside.

And Finally....Gary Usher died of lung cancer on May 25, 1990, at the age of 51.  It was really not until after his death that Gary's impact on the history of music was realized and documented.  Stephen J. McParland wrote a five-volume biography of Gary Usher, entitle The California Sound (An Insider's Story), which I have not read.  Although I was contacted by McParland and gave him some information about our group, The Ship, and our six weeks with Gary, I don't know if the information ever made it into the biography.  I was not so much interested in Gary's place in musical history; I was interested in his place in my history.

Of all the remarkable people I have known, I knew Gary for the shortest length of time.  We did not have any contact after the recording sessions were finished.  Even so, I will always remember that parable. Gary was the one who reached down for me.