CHANGES

Certainly, much of my attraction to the Process lay in my Grail Quest out of the morose atmosphere that soulless technology and bureaucracy had imposed on our lives. Ecology had not yet become the catch slogan of yuppie materialists, yahoo politicians and quarterly stockholder reports. We felt constricted under the thumb of a debased age in which advertised slogans supplanted poetry, contractual agreements replaced love, and televangelism masqueraded as spirituality. Unlike that alien and decadent garb of the Guru cults from the East, the Process had a distinctly Western, Neo-Gothic exterior: Neatly trimmed shoulder length hair and equally neat beards, all set-off by tailored magician’s capes with matching black uniforms.

Apocalypse was in the air; an impending feeling of doom. The multi-colored dreams of psycheldelia had begun to fade and for those of us who had crossed its rainbow bridge there would be no turning back. The world as we had known it would never quite seem the same again. The prevailing order of things — these and a panoply of similar assumptions formerly taken for granted with simple minded acceptance — now came into question, were scrutinized, dissected and exposed for the frauds we felt them to be. But what were these mainstays of our civilization to be replaced with?

- A Tale Of Two Cities -
( From The Book Of Changes )

-Prologue -
Up until this time, the beginning of the 1970s, Changes, a classical folk group formed by myself ( Robert Taylor ) and Nicholas Tesluk, had only played locally in the Chicago area where we both lived. We had begun performing at a Coffee house run by the Process, Church of the Final Judgement, an apocalyptian cult that appeared out of nowhere in the late sixties and early nineteen-seventies in major American cities.After some dozen performances there, we had gotten some experience before a live audience, we then proceeded to play most of the venues in the area that were interested in our brand of music; Coffee houses, bars, and occasional college or university campus. After several years of this sort of activity on a local level, we decided to get out on the road and play some new places and promote our music. We had no manager, engineer, or any real idea how to go about setting up a tour. So what we did was to compile, as best we could, all the possible places, coffee houses, colleges, universities etc. in a route extending from Chicago, south through Illinois, across Missouri and then down through Oklahoma and eventually New Mexico. Our idea was to audition, get the gig, set it up about a month or so later, and then hit most of the places on the return trip. This would of course require getting back on time when we started our journey back north from the southwest. There would be some dead time between, which we figured we could use to simply rest-up, or time and money allowing, take some side trips of personal interest. We had a bit of car trouble along the route, mostly with overheating of the radiator. But for the most part, we did get to audition, talk to bar and coffee-house proprietors’, and activity directors at colleges and universities and pretty much staggered our commitments and dates for performing in a succession of gigs we thought we could do in succession. The schedule was not so tight that there would not be chances for a few adventures and a little sightseeing. For the most part all went well heading southwest. We managed on an impromptu basis to land a number of extra gigs simply by going in a bar or coffee house and asking for a spot on stage that night. We ended up in Silver City New Mexico and got a concert scheduled there for that weekend, three days later. With three days to waste we decided to go for a hike and camp-out in the Gila Wilderness, a place I had been some years before. It was February and we did most of our hiking up in the mountains in knee deep snow. While in town we stayed with some local students, made some good friends, and I was invited to come back and stay down there, which i did several months later. The concert, though on short notice, was gratifying. There were many faces in the audience, I remember, that would later become best of friends with me, sharing houses and friendship, and some heavy partying. - Juarez - After Our stay in Silver City we decided to head south, about 100 miles to the border towns of El Paso/Juarez. We parked and secured our car and instruments in El Paso, and headed across the bridge on the street car that services the two cities. El Paso is a unique city in many respects, but essentially and American city - the contrast when one steps off the street car in Juarez is as though a switch had been thrown. It is a world very much apart culturally - though so close in physical proximity, to it’s U.S. counterpart. In sharp contrast with El Paso, one is first struck by the shear profusion of people on the streets. Most of central Juarez is a literal bazaar of small shops, market areas, and seamy night spots and bordellos. Taxis cabs abound everywhere, whose drivers brazenly solicit tourists with lurid descriptions of the various exotic pleasures to be found. We wandered the streets gawking at the spectacles and inspecting the various goods for sale. Sometime before nightfall we happened on a booth selling guitars. These were locally made cheap guitars costing about ten dollars a piece. The name on them was “ Jom “ We bought a couple of Joms and wandered about to find somewhere to eat. It was balmy weather by our standards, perhaps sixty-five degrees or so that night. We wandered down to the center of town. Most Mexican cities and towns have a central hub. Generally there will be a large roofed pavilion. Usually it is used as a band stand for orchestras at various times of celebration. Nicholas and, weary from a day walking through the markets sat down on the steps of the pavilion. We began to tune the guitars and try them out. They sounded remarkably good. It was only later that we would find that as you took them north through various climactic changes that the sound boards generally would warp and often crack. Also the strings after a short use would become corroded an d sound pretty bad. But for the moment they sounded quite good. We began to sing a few of our songs - not loudly, but in a sort of private tone. Slowly people began to congregate around us. First three or four, then a couple dozen - then a veritable mob began to surround us. pretty soon there were hundreds of people surrounding us. The park in which the pavilion stood, had just minutes before been virtually empty. It now was filling up with people - and more were approaching from all directions. We continued to play, smiling at this spontaneously congregating audience. This was the invisible population of Juarez who live in the streets, sleep in the doorways of shops, and on the benches in parks in the night. We played four or five of our own songs - a big applause went up. We even hastily composed a song, a sort of Marty Robin‘s type ballad “ Juarez Your a woman - a rose in your hair - but the petals have faded - and your pale - not fair “ it began. Another round of applause. Now, a few of the bolder individuals began to make requests: “ Play Dream “ one asked. We did a rendition of the Everly brother’s Dream. Then “ Wake-up Little Susy “. Everyone was suddenly requesting Everly brothers songs. These were songs from the early sixties that still seemed to be favorites here over a decade later. Mexico does have a sort of timelessness about it. Somewhere during this grand concert, we noticed everyone was turning around suddenly looking away from us. We kept playing, but kind of stood on our tip-toes to see what the spectacle was all about. On a bench was a woman, perhaps in her late twenties, laid out prone, and snoring loudly.There had been a stir of a breeze in the air several minutes before. It had grown to a stiff wind. As a result it had blown the woman’s dress back exposing her legs and genitals.Some young practical joker was tickling her between the legs with some leaves - to the general mirth and approval of the crowd.This continued for a while until a man who had some sense of dignity about him stepped in front of the trickster and pulled the woman’s dress down. With this action the woman awoke and smiled at everyone, turned over sideway and went back to sleep. Around this time we noticed some khaki clad soldiers or police with grim expressions on their faces looking over in our direction. In a sense we had created a sort of public disturbance in attracting all these people. We said a hasty farewell to our fans and found our way through the crowd. We still had a large contingent who began to follow us demanding more music.Somewhere along the avenue we slipped into what looked like a bar or nightclub. It turned out instead to be a bordello. Oh well, as long as we were there. We headed off into separate curtained cubicle's and killed a little time. Later as we stepped out back into the street the mob had dispersed and the streets were pretty empty and quite. We headed back to the American checkpoint, new budget guitars in hand, and crossed back into El paso in the greyness of dawn. - El Paso - Flushed with the success of our recent Juarez concert, we sat bleary-eyed on the cold concrete benches in an urban-renewal type of park in the center of downtown El Paso.We spent the morning there fending off an unremitting cavalcade of local drug dealers, pan-handlers and winos, and attempting to figure out our next move. This was resolved when two blue-clad El paso cops entered the park and began making the rounds of the square checking Identifications and interrogating people.I guess there are three things you can always count on wherever you may be; death, taxes and cops. It was around noon-time and we took a walk loosing ourselves in the bustle of the lunch-hour crowds from the local businesses. We just milled about window shopping an girl watching. Just a couple of your average young bug-eyed-eye-ballers out for an afternoon stroll. One particular store caught my interest. It was a sort of occult emporium. A rather large store with two distinct sections. One was devoted to various occult jewelry, crystal balls, pentagram amulets, day-glo art and all the usual satanic and witchcraft accourtments of the era. The other section of the store was devoted to voodoo and Santeria items used by members of the local Mexican community. This section was as different from the other side of the store as Juarez was from El Paso. Here were to be found all sorts of funky folk-art and ritual items; stuffed dolls for sticking pins in, wax candle effigies of men and women, botanical items like herbs and roots. And the largest collection of colored frosted glasses with candles inside that I’ve ever encountered, with superimposed faces of saints you never knew existed. this looked like the business end of the sinister left-hand path. By comparison the other side of the shop looked like any other bric-a - brac shop. We headed back over to the Anglo behind the occult counter. I engaged him in conversation and inquired as to if he was aware of anywhere in town that might hire us on short notice to play a couple of sets that evening. “ As a matter of fact “ he said “ There’s a wine bar right around the corner that has a small stage on which solo and small acts play regularly.” He wrote down the name of the bartender we should go see on a scrap of paper and said: “ ask for this guy, and tell him i sent you.” We thanked him and headed out and around the corner to the wine bar. The wine bar was a small, neat establishment with a small stage off to one side of the main entrance. Best of all the light was dim and it was cool inside. A relief from the scorching sun out of doors. We climbed up on the bar stools, just like regular customers. When the bartender made his way to us I explained that we were musicians and were looking for somewhere to play. I added that we had been advised to see him personally by the fellow around the corner at the occult store. He glanced at the Joms in each of are hands incredulously. After all what would you think of two musicians looking for work with saw-buck guitars in hand. Nicholas raised the Jom, laughing and said: “ we just got these for fun. I play a twelve-string Gibson.” The bartender said “ yeah you could play here, but not this evening we’re hosting a private party here tonight. How about tomorrow evening? Fridays always a good night here.” We thanked him and said we would consider it, but we might not be staying in El Paso another night. But if we did we would come in the following afternoon to see him. We began to move towards the door to leave when he called us back to the bar. A tall fellow, looking like a young Robert Mitchum stood on the other side of the bar from him. He asked us if he could buy us a drink and introduced himself as Dennis - we shook hands with him and we both ordered draft beers. He explained to us that he was one of the people who had hired the place for that evening for a private birthday party. He added that he felt responsible in so much that it would mean we couldn’t get a gig for the evening. “ How would you guys like to play for the party ? I can’t can’t pay you much, maybe $40. dollars and you can pass the hat afterwards if you want. Plus we’ll have a big spread of food and cake and all you can drink as well. “ It sounded good to us - we agreed to return at the appointed hour around 8 o’clock that evening. We hustled out and located the car on a nearby side street. Nothing had been stolen and all was intact. We drove to a nearby fast-food drive in - bought a couple of burgers and used the washroom facilities to clean up and put on our cleanest dirty clothes. We had two button-up purple shirts which Nicholas’s younger sister Diane had given us as both as presents to be used in our stage performances. Eight o’clock arrived and so did we at the downtown bar. Dennis was there to greet us and introduced us to several others and ushered us over to the tables brimming with food - “ just help yourself fellas and order anything from the bar that you want. You can do your show right after we bring out the birthday cake and give the presents” We dug into the food with the tremulous rapacity of hypoglysemics. It was the best chow we had had in quite some time. It was the birthday party of one of the younger girls who had just turned sixteen. After a round of candle blowing, a chorus of the Happy Birthday song and a gift giving sequence - Dennis indicated that we could get on with the show. We mounted the stage and opened up with a ballad titled the “Saddest Thing “ then proceeded through about 45 more minutes of songs. Dennis came up and shook our hand and thanked us for providing such great music. Several of the young girls came up and asked for our autographs. The party was breaking up. Dennis came back and invited us to a party they were having some distance from the bar. he said “ bring your guitars and maybe we can jam a little over there.” He wrote out the address and gave us directions on how to get there. We found the address of the building, a large fine brick two story on a heavily tree-lined residential street. We were greeted at the door by Nevelin, an attractive petite lady in her twenties who had been introduced to us at the bar. I got the feeling she was in some way an intimate of Dennis. Upon entering we were confronted by hundreds of glowing tapers. There were candles in every nook and cranny casting a warm orange-yellow glow. A large fire place crackled on one wall - touring the three main rooms we noticed fire-places ablaze in each of them. Most everyone who had been at the bar earlier, except for the young girls, were present. The stereo tape player boomed out the music of Ligeti, the same music that was used in the opening segments of 2001 A Space Odyssey. It seemed as though we were listening to a loop of music of these two segments most of that evening. The entire scene was both ethereal and at the same time somewhat eerie in it’s overall atmosphere. Refreshments were offered around and one of the ladies came out with a serving dish full of chocolate brownies. Nick and I both helped ourselves to some tea and brownies. One of the ladies sitting across the room on a couch dropped a napkin or something and bent over to retrieve it. i glanced over checking out her rather prodigious cleavage - but what I noticed was a inverted pentagram necklace that had hung down when she bent over. I began to look around at some of the other people there. Several others had inverted pentagrams out side their clothing as well. I jokingly remarked to one of the other ladies that she had a nice pentagram which looked hand made rather than manufactured. Are you folks into Witchcraft I asked in an easy and non-adversarial way. “ Well, something like that “ she said. laughing coquettishly. I attempted to continue the conversation by remarking I knew many people into witchcraft and was pretty up on it all. She smiled again and said: “ I ‘m into something a little heavier than witchcraft, “ her and a friend giggled a bit and shot glances to one another. “ I know a few satanist as well “ I proffered. “ You into The Church Of Satan, Anton LaVey’s group? “ -“ We’ve all read his books and things, but no, she replied shaking here head “ that’s just a bunch of theatrics - not the real thing at all ”.” Well how does what your into differ from Lavey’s group “ I asked. “ I’d rather not get into to it beyond saying that it does.” she replied smugly. “ There’s something that public Satanism lacks “, she continued “ it’s sort of like vampirism without blood “. a tight lipped smile spreading across her mouth. The Anglo from the occult store was sitting, leaning forward listening in rapt attention - he volunteered to her “ that’s really a good way of putting it. I dropped the subject at about that point feeling I would be impolite to pursue it all any further. And that i was being played with in a gentile manner. Dennis came over and suggested we do a song. We got out the guitar and decieded on playing a segment of a ballad “ Legends “ or as we sometimes called it “ the Stranger in the Mirror “. I thought this would be the right tempo and type of piece for the surrounding atmosphere. Somewhere in the middle of the song everything began to get a bit strange and take on an otherworldly dimension. We ended up doing several segments of the song before we finished. Everyone applauded and Dennis said” that was great. Here I’ll do a song for you.” He picked up a non-descript orange hued guitar and fitted the strap over his shoulder. The guitar's resonance was rather amazing in it’s sound. In the course of the next half hour Dennis literally spell bound us with his virtuosity, equally with the guitar playing as well as the sound of his pure vibrant voice. He started off with a Baroque piece by Bach and ended with the folk-song Suzanne. It was obvious this was a man who pocessed some great musical talent. All we could say was “ Wow! “ When he unstrapped the guitar. Nicholas walked over to him and requested to see the guitar - and unassumingly reached out for it. Dennis drew the guitar back in his right hand and held it aloft out of reach. It was a somewhat clumsy moment for Nicholas, who had not expected this reaction. “ Can’t I even touch it,” he queried with a laugh, trying to make light of the situation. Dennis maintained a rather formal demeanor and said o.k. - just one touch. Nicholas touched the guitar with his index finger lightly on the sound board.. Dennis remarked that he didn’t want to seem like some sort of creep, but he was really protective of the guitar. It had cost him six-thousand dollars. It was custom hand-made by a famous guitar craftsman in Spain. In fact he went on to say that he had borrowed the money to have it made from some relatives in Chicago. It was, he remarked the only real thing of real value that he had. The atmosphere lightened and Dennis began to tell us more about his musical involvements. He had begun as an electric guitar player with a number of bands in his teens and early twenties.At some point he had visited Spain on holiday as a student. He happened to attend a number of concerts performed by Segovia and other classical guitarists. After the first concert he was so shaken to the roots of his being by what he heard and saw - that this instrument he had been playing was capable of such subtle moods and techniques, that he had wandered out of the concert hall transfixed, into the street with the realization of it all. He sat in parks and public squares for days thinking about it and decided he could never go back to playing an electric guitar in a rock band again. That to play what he had been playing and manner he had been playing was a profanity he would never repeat again. He resolved that he would learn to play the classical guitar or never play the guitar again. That led to subsequent trips to Spain where he located the guitar maker and found the funds to have it built. That coming Spring he would be leaving for Spain to devote himself to classical guitar. he had found a virtuoso instructor who had agreed to accept him as a pupil. “ In fact “, he continued, I rarely even play the guitar for others anymore. I’m so ashamed at how crudely I play after hearing the performances of real genius. I only played this evening because after hearing the music you guys did, and the sincerity I felt coming across from you both, I wanted to share my playing with you - I figured here were two people that could appreciate the music.” We thanked him for his kind sincere words and wished him the best in his future endeavors. Ligeti came back on the stereo again as Dennis packed his coveted guitar into it’s case. About this time Nicholas and i were both aware that we had ingested something very powerful that evening. I really don’t know if the brownies were laced with LSD or some other psychotropic, but we were on another plane of consciousness to be certain. Usually when cannabis is added to brownies or cookies there is a distinct taste imparted - the brownies we had eaten tasted only like brownies. Several of the other people there said that they had to get going home. They had to be at work early in the morn and it was almost 2:a.m., they gave us an address and invited us to crash at their house on the other side of town. We said good night to everyone and thanked Dennis and nevellan for their hospitality and all and left. We arrived at the car and got in after stowing away the guitar in the trunk. And we sat there in the front seats for what seemed like an eternity. Every time I glanced down into the darkness below the dash board, my mind literally went spinning down into a vortex. We were really tripping - tripping heavy. I have no idea how long it was that we sat there, and hour or more. We just didn’t think we could get it together to drive off. Finally Nicholas said he thought he could handle driving. We pulled out of the parking lot and headed back towards downtown El Paso. It was our starting point as to how to get to the main interstate going North. Both of us figured we would never find the house where the two others had invited us to crash at. That seemed out of the question at the time. We just wanted to get out of El Paso and on the road. By some sort of blind chance we found our way to the main highway and headed north in the direction of New Mexico. We drove along talking and shooting nervous Charlie McCarthy type grins at one another - trying to assure each other that all was well and in control. There wasn’t much traffic on the highway at that time of the night. But the few cars that passsed us by seemed like they were moving at speeds of 200 miles an hour or more. We glanced down at the speedometer. We were going about 15 miles an hour! We made it across the state line between Texas and New Mexico and turned off to the rest stop there. It was with great satisfaction when we unrolled our sleeping bags and spread out on the hard-packed grass. I just pulled the mummy bag over my head, happy to be firmly planted on the ground and oblivious to the larger world without.

Robert Nicholas Taylor