Dear friends,
Don't worry, I'm not writing about Steve sitting in pyramids or anything like that. I won't write a long message here because the book will be out in just a few short days but I'm just letting you know that Zen art (not necessarily
Zen Buddhism) which is the same as spiritual art, or the
expression of meditation has a tradition of thousands and thousands of years in the Orient and to some extent even in the West. I received some training in Japan from Zen Buddhist masters but this isn't about Buddhism, Japan or anything like that but about spiritual expression and that, dear friends, is
universal.
It is through meditation, regardless of the method, in which one develops, should I say, a particularly fine sense and ability for meditative expression. From this meditative point of view, certain kind of deeper qualities can be observed from the art piece, whether it is a painting, a calligraphy, tea ceremony, a dance piece or a piece of music played by on guitar through multi-effects, distortion and whammy

There is a fine spiritual quality bursting through from there. That can be felt, perceived and observed by the listener and if one has experience of meditation on his own, then the whole piece or the production of the artist becomes interesting in a much more profound way, it gains a whole other kind of vista compared to the ordinary. We are talking about meditation applied into art and that has been around for several millennia, I'm not pulling rabbits out of my hat here. Steve isn't the only one who has this deep quality in his music, there are many others, but he is very unique and dear to me personally. So don't worry I'm not going to write anything silly but based on my extensive training in the fields of meditation, arts and music.
I would love to get the book to Steve for reading as soon as it comes out. He has talked about his spiritual views on
many many interviews, one just has to be able to hear it... I've gone through a
lot of them, mostly on YouTube, and there will be direct quotes from him in the book. I will elaborate to some extent based on his words based on my own professional background on the matter. When he talks about his way of creating music and meditation in workshops and seminars, he just switches into another mode *snap* and talks from a place from within him which is rare to see in an artist. It cannot come from anywhere else than the inner core or the
true self, and he's said this over and over again in the interviews. Here
his spirituality or
mine spirituality and our agreements or disagreements lose meaning altogether.. Based on my years and years of planning this project and listening to his music over and over again, both live and studio, I'm pretty confident that this book will be well received by him.
Much Love,
- Baba