Dijo “Soy Hierba Luisa
She said I am Hierba Luisa Planta de la Selva Plant of the jungle Tengo regalos para ti I have gifts for you El primero es esta cancion” The first is this song This song was originally written during a plant dieta in the Amazon rainforest, just outside of Pucallpa, Peru. A plant diet, or “dieta”, is the manner by which the local Shipibo shaman learn about the plants that they use in their curative work. This dieta was a combination of plants, the primary plant being Chiric Sanango, a very powerful cleanser of the neurological system. But we also dieted a smaller plant, Yerba Luisa Aquatica. This plant, similar to its cousin that many enjoy in a tea, is in a class of plants the Shipibo call Warmi. Warmi plants are used to attract energy - love, abundance, creativity. And this one is also used as a kind of telepathic link, permitting the curandero added benefits in ceremony. For example, if someone is sad during ceremony, the Yerba Luisa plant will let the curandero know. My girlfriend and I both dieted this plant, and I have to say the instances of our both thinking and even saying the exact same thing greatly increased. While our relationship was relatively new at the time, and many couples do experience these kinds of parallel intuitions/conclusions as the relationship grows, I like to think its the Hierba plant doing its thing. I had a particularly memorable experience with Chiric Sanango during a very intense ayahuasca ceremony. It seemed to be a very powerful night for everyone involved. At one point my friend Gregory came over and started playing a beautiful song on his guitar. He was not playing it to me, but he was very close by. The emotional resonance with the song became stronger and stronger. He was singing a love song about waiting for someone and yearning to change. A song about love, redemption and personal transformation. My girlfriend Ivana was sitting right next to me. Something inside my chest broke lose, and an uncontrolled avalanche of emotion took over. As I regained composure the overwhelming emotional response was replaced with a kind of super-intense electromagnetic sensation in my chest, shooting down my arms and out my hands. My hands felt like two big spinning gyroscopes, producing this incredible energy field. I looked at my arms and could see patterns of blue electricity shooting through them, similar to the textile designs that the local Shipibos call K’na patterns. This astonishing and extremely pleasurable experience continued for quite some time, then our shaman Don Gaspar launched into a very long and intense icaro. In my vision, I saw him astrally as a great king, a kind of Amazonian healer-king complete with headress and bio-luminescent tunic. I sang with him, clapping my big electric hands and laughing the whole time at how ridiculously powerful he was. Later he explained that this was the Chiric Sanango cleaning me out. Our days were filled with free time for yoga, mapatcho (a kind of jungle tobacco), art and music. One day I tuned the E string on my guitar down to D (the infamous drop D tuning saturated by bands during the Great Grunge Wars). Immediately the simple I-V bass figure started happening. As I added chords something took over and soon I knew here was...something. The D became a drone through the whole song, and I plucked chords on top of it, shifting the notes here and there to produce tension and release. The bass figure had a sweet, gentle quality to it, and I started singing over it in a very subdued, almost bossanova like style. For some reason, Spanish seemed appropriate, in spite of my limited vocabulary. I could not quite execute all this while singing...the gentle groove being difficult to maintain. Because of its harmonic simplicity, I immediately felt that layered guitar feedback would lend the song a distinctive atmosphere, and I could work with dissonance around the very simple architecture of the song, creating spacey, ambient effects. The tune sat around for about a year without me really doing much with it. I filled out the lyrics (with a little help from Ivana…the line about the plant whispering in my ear is hers) and shelved it. But then we found a new place to live and I started recording again. After recording an instrumental (Guitano), I felt strongly that the time was right to record something with singing. I had lived in apartments for years, and realized it had seriously inhibited my productivity. The last thing you want is to feel self-conscious at the moment of spontaneous creativity. To compose anything, I need to be in a comfortable place...so comfortable that my own critical faculties can turn off and disassociate from the project I’m working on. I remembered the original vision I had, with the guitar feedback in the background. But I did not have an amplifier to work with, just a tiny practice amp which did not sound good at all. The electric guitars would have to be recorded direct. Then I remembered my eBow. An ebow is a very simple magnetic device that vibrates the steel strings of an electrical guitar to produce infinite sustain. One caveat is that it can only produce linear music on a single string. No chords! The solution to this was to play leads with the ebow through the entire piece improvisationally. Then dub over it without listening to the original take. Then again and again. Eventually my little improvs became more cogent ideas. The end result is a mix between the earlier, more abstract explorations, and the more composed lines that came later on. It is a very use-the-accident, Brian Eno sort of a approach. I also added the little plucked artificial harmonic lines, in order to provide a bit more sonic interest in this very simplistic piece of music. My favorite part of this song occurs at the 2:20 mark. The chords here change, from a simple D major triad, down to a D9b5, down again to Db9sus+ and down to a D triad again. It is a passage with a great deal of unexpected tension, which was then decorated with a big helping of the aforementioned e-bow lines. Hierba Luisa Acuática Nadando en el rio Swimming in the river Bajo de las estrellas Under the stars El rio fluye lentimente The river flowed slowly La Luna bailar en sus aguas The moon danced on its waters Vi una planta pequeña I saw a little plant Creciendo cerca la orcilla Growing by the riverside La planta ere muy bonita The plant was very pretty En mi oido susurro She whispered in my ear Dijo “Soy Hierba Luisa She said I am Hierba Luisa Planta de la Selva Plant of the jungle Tengo regalos para ti I have gifts for you El primero es esta cancion” The first is this song “El segundo regalo para ti The second gift for you Es un imane por energia Is a magnet for energy Energia positiva Positive energy Bueno suerte, y amor” Good luck, and love Cuando nando en el rio When I swim in the river Su presencia me acompania Her presence accompanies me La presencia de Hierba Luisa The presence of Hierba Luisa Hierba Luisa Acuática Hierba Luisa Aquatica Bailarina de las aguas Dancer of the waters Hierba Luisa Acuática Hierba Luisa Aquatica
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