I'm currently living in a campground in the canyons of Utah, near a monastery, where an upcoming music festival will be held later this month: the Strawberry Fields Forever Music Festival & Enlightenment Retreat. I'm here both as a volunteer to help with all the festival preparations, and also as an artist doing lots of my own music and collaborations with other artists. It's a very exciting time for me, as this festival symbolizes a profound shift in consciousness which I experience happening in myself and in everyone I know. It the same feeling that I imagine people were experiencing in 1969 as they made their way to Woodstock, and so recently I was inspired to learn this Joni Mitchell song by the same name. For me, the song captures that profound sense of spiritual longing I believe we all share: to remember our original Innocence and get "back to the Garden.

Here are the lyrics to the song, as well as the recording I just did yesterday with the help of my friend Laura...

Woodstock (by Joni Mitchell):

I came upon a child of God
She was walking along the road
And I asked her tell me, "Where are you going?"
And this she told me...

She said, “I'm going down to Yasgur's Farm”,
Gonna join in a rock and roll band.
I’m gonna camp out on the land,
And get my soul free.

We are stardust.
We are golden.
And we've got to get ourselves back to the Garden.

Well can I walk along beside you?
I have come here to lose the smog,
And I feel like I’m a cog in something turning… round and round.

And maybe it’s just the time of the year,
Or maybe it's the time of man.
I don't know who I am,
But life is for learning.

We are stardust.
We are golden.
And 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 there was song and celebration.

And I dreamed I saw the bomber jet planes
Flying shotgun in the sky,
Turning into butterflies
Above our nation.

We are stardust.
We are golden..
And we've got to get ourselves back to the Garden.

With Love,
Erik