Dreams of Paragliding Butterflies
in the garden of supernovas
…And I dreamed I saw the bomber jet planes
riding shotgun in the sky,
turning into butterflies
above our nation
We are stardust, we are golden,
We are caught in the devil's bargain
and we've got to get ourselves
back to the garden
Woodstock | Joni Mitchell
Recovering from a long week of pain, bad enough to miss out on a friend’s party this past Saturday, my mind lead to the 2017 Route 91 Harvest Music Festival in Las Vegas. This friend’s youngest daughter was there and I hadn’t seen her or her other kids since they were much younger. She was one of many running for her life where 60 people died and 413 were injured. I was shooting music festivals in 2015 and in 2016. During 2016 I was photographing a band as they paid tribute to the Pulse Nightclub shooting . Standing there on the stage, behind the band, I was staring out at the many faces, including my family, who were attending the last day, my youngest son a twisted red color of tears as my oldest son wrapped his arms around him. A surreal moment of bowing heads, the festival grounds went silent. Never could I imagine this type of vulnerability that we have seen over and over in history, at the hands of evil.
I popped on some Lauren Daigle, then switched over to Joni Mitchell. I loved reading that Lauren’s dad introduced her to the music of my growing up years, like Joni and Led Zeppelin and how she began to write in her recovery. Her mom observing that Lauren was actually writing poetry not knowing anything about it. She bought Lauren paper and staples to create a little book, which lead to visions of her future and God’s voice as she laid in the attic soaking in the crack of sun, during her recovery from a severe form of mono for over two years.
Joni Mitchell, stricken with polio at age nine, was hospitalized for weeks, the threat of living in an iron lung looming. After she recovered, school became a struggle as she took to painting. During high school, an unconventional teacher encouraged her to write poetry. She dropped out in grade 12 and her first album was dedicated to him.
I thought about how pain, grief, sickness can open doors to so much creativity. Both artist’s lyrics speaking of love, hope, pain, meditation and joy in the garden of goodness, circumventing all that was bad in the world.
The fog of exhaustion from so much pain, music a jubilation, I heard “Woodstock” for the millionth time.
It struck me like a fiery branding of my heart.
My mind filled with the young people attending the Supernova Music Festival 3.1 miles from Gaza–Israel border.
Whatever their government or the government of Palestine was doing, they were persistent in getting back to the garden. They loved music and believed in peace.
I’m uncertain anyone attending a music festival imagines anything but experiencing a blessing. A potentially life-changing event where you shore-up friendships, make new friends and maybe meet your life-mate, as our oldest did during Coachella years ago. Albeit, music festivals can be party-heavy, they are a right of passage for many, a sealing of memories later told in rocking chairs to the wide-eyed young.
Like Woodstock.
As I stood on that stage, I tried not to allow myself to think too hard. I had a job to do and quite frankly my job always had me like an adrenaline junky, high, lost, absorbed in the stills of moments never to be repeated in the exact same way.
Recently, I heard the testimony of one young man who escaped the festival last October 7th. He can barely function without the dog his family got him and many of his friends and fellow concert escapees have taken their lives. Suicide vs. a forced indefinite psychiatric hospital stay. There are young people living like vegetables in these hospitals unable to function at all. This is the quality of their once desired peaceful life. Young women so brutally and sexually assaulted they are living dead.
In the context of my love for Jesus and people, I cannot fathom a band of devils flying into a music festival I was covering, committing the atrocities of which they did, grabbing and stealing human beings, children and leaving nothing but carnage behind.
I cannot imagine in my love of Jesus supporting this band of devils.
I love all His children suffering on either side of a sanguine Eden.
He weeps over every person who desires peace from the pacifist children attending a music festival, to the little children used as targets by grownups who would have them believe in their sweet, innocent little minds that other people deserve to die because they are a different people.
When Joni Mitchell wrote this song she didn’t want to be filming a television talk show. She wanted to be in the garden. She wanted to be on the road to a place that would fill her soul with like minded people searching for peace. She wrote this song in response to her manager telling her “it would be more advantageous” for her to be on t.v.
Joni Mitchell was an artist. Not a sell-out. She didn’t care about the screen. Never has. Not made for this world, she got it early on. But Mitchell filmed the talk-show. It grated her insides so much she did what a true artist does. She wrote about it. In her song, “Woodstock,” she refers to “coming upon a child of God” going to the music festival. She imagines what’s going on in Vietnam and sees butterflies instead of the vision of bomber planes. And long ago, Mitchell understood the trap of “the devil’s bargain.”
Caught, ensnared in an eternal spiritual warfare of good and evil, from dust they came, bright stars of supernovas.. and from dust they went.
We’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.
“By the time we got to Woodstock
We were half a million strong
And everywhere was a song
And a celebration…”
“Well, I came upon a child of God
He was walking along the road…”
- Woodstock | Joni Mitchell
This is dedicated to the lost souls of October 7th’s Supernova Music Festival and their families. Praying daily for the hostages to be returned.
It is indeed heart rending and shocking, I can’t imagine enjoying the peace and joy of music and suddenly have it all turn to terror like that.
I am so glad you are feeling better. That sounds excruciating, what an ordeal. I hope you don’t have any more episodes any time soon. Have a good day, Deb. I always enjoy your positivity in the face of it all.
Get ourselves back to the garden, I love that. This a beautiful and poignant tribute, well done. Yes, I do remember attending music festivals in my youth, the elation of being surrounded by and swept up in music; the shared feeling of euphoria. I can’t imagine that turning into such horror and terror. Thank you for this beautiful article with your gorgeous photographs (how fun to shoot music festivals!). I hope you are feeling better soon.