D’Ann Katsu Davis

Photos

This is a selfie snapped during the recording of the album Soul Cry. As preparation for recording it, I meditated for days in a row, for most of the day, in a yurt in rural Oregon. At about day three, I felt like I was levitating, so I took this shot, and this is how it rendered. No filters or effects of any kind. Naturally, the camera captured this feeling.

In the next day or two, I felt ready to begin recording…. but when switched gears to begin, there was a catastrophic equipment failure! Yet after days of meditation, I just laughed. No stress at all. I went with it. My control surface was tits up, and totally dead. So there was no way to physically move the levels…

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I had only the computer now. When I had the physical slides of the control surface (linked with the software) I would begin them all at zero/fully down. So by impulse, I began to do the same “starting position” on the computer screen, when I noticed the levels on the computer were moving themselves!! Still, out of habit, I moved a couple, before realizing that I liked the sounds, and I liked the mix. So I simply listened for a while, and watched the slides in semi-amazement; and then—I kid you not—I simply pushed record….

I’ve always thought of my work as a collaboration with earth and spirit—but never had I been so squarely put in the back seat. (Well with writing books sometimes, in between the blood, sweat and tears, I was definitely in the backseat, while the story wrote itself. And in performance, my aim is always to show up and then get out of the way. This has been my spiritual/musical practice for decades but never with recording, and certainly nothing even close to this extent! But art at its most fun, is watching and discovering!)

Anyway, I watched and listened as the computer pulled files I had recorded decades earlier—ones I had forgotten about, and ones that I had no idea where they were stored. I can’t remember how the album stopped. It was all a deeply altered experience. But the album, after days of prep, was one take.

Hahahahaha.

The best time recording ever, not to mention the days leading up to it. When I wasn’t meditating I was naked in the sun, walking barefoot on the lush grass and enjoying my hand pressed morning espresso under the dabbled sun of an elder tree. Those days leading up to the album, I felt like I was having the time of my life. That said, anyone who has tried to meditate knows it is not at all easy. Simple, yes. Easy—not at all. They call meditation retreats “retreats” only to bait and then switch. It’s very very difficult, but the rewards are ___________ wonder full. The affect of drugs without the effect of drugs–this is the unintentional benefit of playing my ancient instruments and one of the guiding principles, from the beginning, of my shamanic and yogic sound compositions; I hope you too will experience insight and expanded awareness from engaging with them. “The road to heaven feels like hell, and the road to hell feels like heaven.” Playing Mantis says.