Tomorrow I’m pedaling from my home in West Orange, NJ up to Walden, NY.  It’s about 70 miles there and back.  I’ll pedal most of the day and then the plan is to arrive at the Shanti Mandir ashram around 7:00 and join the lovely people there for an evening of meditation.  I’ll then sleep in the woods on their property and then leave very early the next morning and pedal home.  Of course  I’ll stop once in a while on both days and sing and play some Sonic Divide music!

It will be cold, but my sleep kit will keep me warm.  Here it is:

I put the dollar bill there to give you an idea of the incredibly small size.  So the red bag on the far right is my sleeping bag.  It’s down and rated to 30F.  To the left of that is the bivy sack, which is basically a body bag.  It takes the place of the tent.  The red bag in the middle is the tarp.  On nights where it might rain I attach that to the bike and spread it out to the ground.  On the far left by the dollar bill is the air mattress.  This is all ultralite gear.  Here are the weights:

sleeping bag      24 ounces

bivy sack             7 ounces

tarp                       9 ounces

air mattress        10 ounces

Total weight = 50 ounces or 3.2 pounds

Not bad for a room for the night.  Here is what it looks like when it’s all laid out:

Actually, in that picture from 2014 is my old air mattress, which was about twice the packed size of my new one and twice the weight.  Here is what the new one looks like:

The weird shape is based on the theory of “body mapping” or the idea that  you only really need padding where there are pressure points, which is your hips, shoulders, head, and feet area.  The other areas are left open, which saves a lot of weight and packed space, and also allows the down in your sleeping bag to loft better.

When I first rolled it out on my cement garage floor I thought “No way is this going to be comfortable.”  It only took me three full breaths to blow it up (versus 30 for the old air mattress, which is tough after riding for 12+ hours) and then when I laid down I was shocked to feel that indeed it was just as comfortable as the other one, and quieter too.

But the proof is in the pudding, and the pudding will be the overnighter tomorrow.  Temps will be in the low 30s/high 20s, so I’ll know for sure by the middle of the night if this thing works to keep me comfortable and warm.  We’ll see!

 

 

And yet another ground-breaking piece landed in my inbox a few days ago.  Nathaniel Bartlett is an amazing composer, marimba virtuoso, and one of the best digital musicians I know of.  Nate’s knowledge of computers and music technology is far, far beyond most mortals.  His new piece is titled “Cronometro” and includes an innovative video score that I can play on my phone, which is quite handy for the Sonic Divide.  You can see the entire score here:

The use of technology in this way is really exciting.  Even though I’ll be pedaling up and down the mountains on my own power, the Sonic Divide is definitely a high-tech adventure what with a carbon bike, GPS, smart phone, dynamo hub, etc, etc.  Nate’s creative use of technology is a perfect compliment to this project.

Michael Udow contributed a piece to Sonic Divide and I just got it in my inbox yesterday.  Michael was my primary percussion teacher when I was an undergraduate student at the University of Michigan, but he’s also been much, much more than that to me.  There’s no doubt in my mind that the reason I have the courage to try something as crazy as the Sonic Divide is in part because of Mike’s inspiration.  He is a true artist through and through, an amazing composer, percussionist, instrument builder, teacher, producer, and many more things.  He’s a Renaissance man with a firm grounding in the past but always with an eye (and ear) to the future.  I feel very lucky that he wrote a piece for me, and I feel very lucky that I got to study with him.

His piece is unique in that it requires me to compose a new haiku at the end of each day on the Sonic Divide.  He offers me one to start:

the old stones listen / wind soothes my tired body / peace is from within

What a lovely haiku!  A lovely way to connect the physical activity with the sonic world.

Mike provides instructions for me to improvise on that haiku while I recite it, and then to do the same for each of the haikus that I compose while I’m on my journey, each of which is a meditation on the day’s experiences.  I estimate that the Sonic Divide will take me about 25 days to finish, so I will end up with quite a bit of material.  It’s an ingenious concept.

What’s really interesting to me is that both of the pieces created by my mentors (Michael Udow and Robert Morris) force me to slow down and meditate on my experience.  Given that I tend to move quickly and energetically through life, I am grateful for these pieces.  They know me perhaps better than I do, the sign of a great teacher.   Their blessings continue to shower down upon me.

I’m honored to receive yet another amazing Sonic Divide composition, this time from Asha Srinivasan.  In this piece Asha gives me some structure to create a piece on the spot using the time of day and date in the calendar to create a piece for voice and found objects percussion.  It’s perfect in every way and perfectly blends Indian and Western music ideas.  Bravo, Asha!!

Eric Funk just sent me his contribution to Sonic Divide.  It’s a gorgeous meditation on life and solitude and our place in these vast cosmos.  Eric wrote for voice and log drum/found pieces of wood from the forest, with text by John Haek.  I’ve already learned the first page and I love it.  The second line is “I am alone on the summit of a mountain . . .”  I’ll definitely perform this on one of the Divide crossings at the top of a mountain in Montana.  Eric was born and raised in Montana.  He still lives there and composes, performs, teachers, and runs an amazing PBS show about music in Montana called “11th and Grant with Eric Funk.”  I’m really honored to have him on board with this project.