Playing Mantis: A Workbook for Inner Peace and a Playbook for the Revolution

By D'Ann Katsu Davis

Playing Mantis is the spiritual autobiography of a praying mantis, an allegorical memoir, and the lyrics to the author's wordless music. D'Ann Katsu's writing also sings-like the impossible vocal range of her concerts-in a voice free of gender, culture, and even species.

Playful as it is poetic and profound, Playin

• Language: English
• Publisher: Atmosphere Press
• Release date: Sep 30, 2022
• ISBN: 9781639886371

Book preview

TRACK LIST

More than two hours of the author’s original compositions are embedded in the story and help tell the story. The Playing Mantis novel serves as the lyrics to the author’s music.

Chapter 2

1. Sound Medicine 2. Temple Block 3. Self-Judgment 4. Yes

Chapter 3

5. One Note 6. Nada Inside 7. Guru

Chapter 4

8. Solo Shakuhachi 9. Enlightenment 10. Satori

Chapter 5

11. The School of Music

Chapter 6

12. Integration

Chapter 8

13. Death Delayed

Chapter 9

14. Misa’s Song for Peace

Chapter 10

15. Tragic Comedy 16. Carlos Icaros

Chapter 12

17. The Never-Beginning Journey

Chapter 14

18. Playing Mantis Duet

Chapter 15

19. Inner Cosmos

Chapter 16

20. No Words

Chapter 23

21. Grandmother’s Rattle 22. Seventh Heaven 23. Silence

BOOK ONE

A WORKBOOK FOR INNER PEACE

Beforeword

The Playing Mantis story began while I was working on a music project with Todd Snider. Todd and Dave Schools (of Widespread Panic) were recording with Bob Weir in his TRI Studios north of San Francisco, when Todd decided he wanted my deep shit (my music) on their Hard Working Americans record.

During that project I was asked for my music bio. But when I sat down to write it, I quickly realized I was more interested in writing a bio of the music. That bio of my music became a book of essays—each chapter detailed a spiritual experience, or spiritual tradition, that influences the music I play.

When I desperately needed an editor for that work, the brilliant and badass Carol Hiltner was godsent. She was a fan of my music, and said she’d be happy to read my book. When she finished, she said her Altai Books in Seattle would publish it—as a book on sound healing.

But, she said, I think you can make this into a story. And I think you have it in you—you wouldn’t believe what crosses my desk. Having just written for a good year, I politely declined. But she insisted and persisted. There is no doubt you have walked your talk.

Then emphatically, I’m throwing down the gauntlet here. Still, I declined; and I went back to my music. But then, about two weeks later, this book, without prompting, began as an urgent thrill on scrap paper. Then moved to a notepad, and later a notebook, before ending, years later, on a computer in the middle of the night.

It began as a surprise and was filled with surprises all along the way. In fact I’m pretty sure it was the spirit of my newest shakuhachi—Zen meditation flute—that started this story. I had just received it when this story—on its own—began. In fact, the magic and traditions of my shakuhachi and Native American flute wrote the book.

Together they tell how my music came into being; where it took me; and what I experienced and learned along the way. This book and my music are the same project. The Playing Mantis novel is the song within the songs, and the lyrics for my wordless musical compositions. It is the words for the wordless in general—for the ‘effin’ ineffable, in all its forms.

Playing Mantis is a story within a story within a story within a story. It is the spiritual autobiography of a praying mantis, and an allegorical memoir, while at the same time answering the question of what the hell am I doing with my music and sounds? Which was a central goal. But it also came to embody larger social and even cosmological themes.

The main characters are an amalgamation of my Goddess, Wiccan, Pagan, and especially my Buddhist, Yogic, and Native American teachers. My Native teachers taught that every species has a medicine, and each is a teacher in those medicine ways. There are not individual praying mantises, but Praying Mantis.

There are not individual swans, but Swan. Not individual butterflies, but Butterfly, and so on. I kept with this convention throughout this book, and the whole story itself is told from the perspective of a male Buddhist, and female indigenous, praying mantis.

In the end, my music and my writing serve the same purpose—to connect us deeply to our truth, each another, and the planet. My music and my writing support the decolonization of consciousness and the re-indigenization of the world—I offer my life and my work to this transformation and restoration.

Madame, all stories, if continued long enough, end in death, and he is no true storyteller

who would keep that from you.

Ernest Hemingway

1

The Big Island

Every day I cleaned the shit out of the bottom of birdcages—a never-ending line of them in a pet store in my hometown of Portland, Oregon—to get enough money to fly here to Hawaii. And now, here, I am living halfway between the Pacific Rim of Asia, and the West Coast of the United States--where the Far Out East meets the Far Out West. And I love it here.

I would not have made it through that (literal) shit job, if I wasn’t sure that money would have gotten me out of there, and to Terri Lyn—my girlfriend who was already living here in Hawaii getting us jobs and a place to live.

Now we both work at the rustic retreat center Kalani Honua—which, in the Native Tongue, means The Harmony of Heaven and Earth—it’s just down the street from the empty lot where our tents are pitched. Terri’s friends on the mainland, in Southern Oregon, are letting us stay here, while they are away.

It’s perfect too, because you have to walk through a thicket of jungle to get to the hidden clearing where we share a two-person tent. We have another pup tent for all our stuff. But even in such cramped quarters we have never fought, not even once; maybe because we have no bills, not even one.

There’s a lean-to on this land also, but we never really use it. We eat at work mostly. Terri works in the kitchen at Kalani because like the goddess she is, she loves to feed people. With an abundance of love she cooks up something delicious and offers it with loving kindness. Not only does Terri Lyn understand we are all family—ohana—she acts that way too. She is a master mistress of generosity.

She gives of herself and her things like she is going to die in a couple of weeks. She understands, in the scheme of things, we’re all going to die in a couple of weeks. The first forty years of life is a second, and the second forty is the last second. That’s what she says. And in the end, it’s all the blink of an eye.

Terri Lyn has a full goddess body, full of lusty laughter, sparkles and life. Her long hair is brown, and her flashing loving eyes are green. Like many of the folks here at Kalani, Terri practices yoga and meditation. But I don’t. I just clean up the place.

Which I mean to do as a meditation, but I’m too young and my head is too full. Sometimes I try too hard to meditate, and that doesn’t work either. But I do walk a lot, and that clears the head. And I walk a lot here. These long jungle walks among the wild fragrance of huge tropical flowers are one of the reasons I like where I work.

We didn’t have a car for the first several months that we lived here, but Terri just bought us one for ninety-nine bucks. So you can imagine what it looks like. It doesn’t even start with a key—it starts by touching two wires together underneath the steering column. Anyway, not surprisingly, this old car is how we came to know Paul—the mechanic.

He lives way out there, and way up there too—as it were—he lives in a tree house. As we ascend in bumps up the road where he lives, he descends down, in bumps, from where he lives. He is never much for words, but he is not at all unfriendly. His eyes are soft.

And he’s not just a mechanic.

He’s a Car Healer.

When we roll up in our old lady, he gets immediately to work, walking around her and sizing her up. He has absolutely no use for tools—he can tell what’s wrong just by listening. If she doesn’t sound right, he knows what’s wrong, and how to fix it. Like honking a horn to break up traffic, Paul makes noises to break stuff up, and returns harmony with other sounds.

He sniffs too, and feels pulses while looking deep into the cosmos, before his whole body disappears under the hood. He squeezes, pokes, and he even tastes things—he sucks stuff up with his mouth, and then spits it quickly to the ground. It looks like antifreeze to me—but I’m no professional. Paul is a master mechanic, used to work the NASCAR pits.

But now he works in the Old Ways. He must have picked them up someplace out there—wherever we are, were. Like all indigenous healers; he is a healer because he has healed himself. And Paul—he knows how to meditate. He told me the mind is like a car.

When he needs it, he uses it; but when we doesn’t need it, he parks it quietly in the garage. He says it takes patience and practice to not allow the mind to take us for a ride. His mind doesn’t drive him crazy anymore. It doesn’t speed out of control from one thought to the next and the next, reckless and mean.

For him it isn’t so much about not having thoughts, so much as it is about not engaging them. When he catches himself going down the wrong road, especially in a self-pummelling thought, he throws it into neutral, and lets it idle a while. He says it hard to shift from a negative thought to a positive one, but if you throw it into neutral in between the two—it’s a lot easier.

Then, in time, the mind naturally fuses with supreme, sparkling peace. In this way, in time, he made a pleasant friend of his mind. And he has made a friend of us too. I really love him so much, and I love that he lives in a tree house, too. Good people find good people, I guess, because Terri Lyn is always finding people like this—everywhere.

She finds good people at home too. But we’re taking a break from home at the moment. She, from her running her small business, and me—I’m taking a break from school. I’m getting my degree in philosophy. Super practical I know. But if it weren’t for philosophy, I wouldn’t be able to stay in school. So I figured a degree in philosophy is better than no degree at all.

I started in Western Philosophy, but I’m studying Eastern Mysticism now. The fragmentation and disconnection of Western philosophy wasn’t working for me—except for Nietzsche maybe. He said the central task of philosophy was to, become who we really are. But it was the absurd meaninglessness, angst, and alienation of existentialism I could do without.

Same goes for reductive physicalism, and reductive rationalism. I suppose I ended my studies in Western Philosophy as a post-post-modernist—meaning I walked through its nihilism and survived—and now thrive. But what I really want is to learn to love better, to love well, and Western Philosophy wasn’t helping me with any of my central endeavors of peace, love, and meaning.

Neither is the materialistic culture that sprang from it—with its endless marketing, plastic packaging, and those glossy brochures that never deliver. Those chill me to my very bones—they really do. Of course the menu can never be the meal; and the map is not the territory. But still, it is good to have a good map.

At this point in my life, that’s what I’m looking for—a meaningful reference point—an art and philosophy that identifies and solves the spiritual and psychological challenges in ourselves, and in our times. A kind of true north of truth itself—something like God.

But not the weaponized, politicized venom of KKKhristianity that makes a villain of the dark—which in that philosophy includes women, girls, the Earth, and all forms of the feminine. Nietzsche claimed it was a kind of desperation for punitive authority this herd embraced the tenets of that other Christian god—Satan.

The herd he said wanted the true pleasures of a position, and meaningful work in the world. But because of the herd’s lack of guts, grit, and gifts the fulfillments of satisfying sex, loving intimacy, and a creative, productive intelligence were out of their reach. So they denounced those who did prioritize, and realize, their pleasures.

But even the greatest souls among us, he said, might not achieve such difficult things in life. But that getting valuable things done hurts, and that difficultly itself is integral to human happiness. He felt sorry for anyone doing anything else, or otherwise. Live dangerously! was his rallying cry.

So yah, I’m doing my best to fess up to, my true desires; to pursue them bravely I kneel only before truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love. While, at the same time, I am willing to mourn any of my resulting failures with dignity and humility. What I mean is, like Nietzsche, I have no interest in bullshit or the regret that arises from not being true to my heart, or myself. 

Walking down these long jungle roads I learn a lot about what is true, and what is beauty, and where I am bullshitting myself, and when I am not. Even though we have a car now, this is why I still prefer to walk to work. And I’d rather walk alone, than endure unpleasant company; but if I can walk with a lover, healer, teacher, friend, musician, or artist—that I truly love.

Anyway, all this to say, it’s a good time to take a break from school. Plus what I learn on the road, I take to my studies. And what I learn in school augments what I learn on the road. I haven’t been able to stay solidly in school. I get sick of it, then I get a job. But then I get sick of working, too—so I go back to school. Until I get sick of it again, and return to work.

And now, here I am living halfway between

the Pacific Rim of Asia,

and the West Coast

of the United States where

the Far Out East meets

the Far Out West.

And I love it here. Hawai’i has the most Buddhists of any US State, and a strong indigenous community. The indigenous ways, in terms of pedagogy, cosmology, and their relationship to nature, have a lot more in common with the East, than the West. In the indigenous worldview, for example, the venomous Viper of Christianity is a skin-shedding relative that models the medicine of transformation.

Living on this island too, are many of the most revered Zen teachers practicing the Old Ways of tea, the sword, and the shakuhachi (the Zen meditation flute). Nietzsche said, Life without music would be a mistake. I’m not sure I would go that far, but maybe?

My friend Todd Snider, a professional touring musician, says if a person isn’t willing to die for their music, then he’s not interested in listening to it. After he said that I realized I have been willing to die for my music. But the music I want to hear, I haven’t been able to find out in the world yet. And I’ve gone to some far out places thinking I would find it—but never even close.

It is looking like I’m going to have to

create that music myself?

It all began when I first laid on eyes on a sparkling silver flute in an open blue velvet case on my best friends kitchen counter. I was only a kid then, and as soon as they would let me—in the second grade—I began to play, and I’ve been playing ever since. But I only recently picked up the shakuhachi. And I haven’t yet been able to get a sound out of it.

It is the most difficult woodwind in the world, and some say it is the most difficult of all instruments. It is a bamboo flute so simple in construction—a single hollow reed—that it is extremely difficult to play. It is a nonsecular practice of breath, posture, and sound. One has to change in good ways to play well…

I used to be discouraged by it’s difficulty but then one day I found myself attracted to the challenge of it. Plus I’m at a point in my life where I want to play from heart and soul, not from musical notation; not from a thin sheet of thin paper. The shakuhachi is an ancient instrument of meditation