Printed on
Sustainable Forestry Initiative® (SFI®)
Certified Sourcing paper.
A portion of
proceeds supports Potters for Peace water
filter projects around the world.
"This
novel ( . . . so much of it is "true" it is
barely a novel . . . ) is like entering a good
and trusting heart, a heart that believes that
following ones inner intuition leads to the
ultimate unfolding of life's essence." - Richard Weekley,
author of Already There
"If
you know someone with an itch to ditch it all
and immerse themselves in another world, get
them this riveting account. It requires courage
and imagination for Lucy to have done what she
did, but the main thrust of this story is that
if Lucy can do it, so can you. And who can’t use
THAT kind of inspiration." - Ellen Snortland,
author of Beauty Bites Beast and playwright of
"Now That She's Gone"
Get
Inspired NOW with "Lucy Plays Panpipes for
Peace, a Novel by Lynette Yetter" at local and
online bookstores (Distributed by Ingram)
www.amazon.com
www.amazon.co.uk
www.betterworldbooks.com
www.barnesnoble.com
www.powells.com
etc etc etc
REVIEW of
Lucy Plays Panpipes for Peace
By Tantra
Bensko
Lynette
Yetter’s
novel draws from her own life when she
went to the Andes, pulled by the sound of
the panpipes as a tool for transformation.
Yet it is fiction, in the way called for
in David Shields’ Reality Hunger. It means
more knowing she really did something
truly audacious and death defying. Here,
we get a glimpse of how close to reality
it is, and how the fiction made it into
the powerful book it is.
“Hurtling through space and time, the blue
orb was rapidly self-destructing. Vital
fluids pumped out of its innards burned in
orgies of greed. The vapors ate away its
luminous ozone skin.
Indigenous Elders, you might call them
brain cells of wisdom, were ignored.
New synapses of fiber optic cable and
satellite rays rationalized the
destruction as ‘progress.’
Chaos surged like a flooding river.”
Thus begins the story in which Lucy goes
to participate in the ancient culture of
the Andes.
Her words continue to swell when she
extends her viewpoint outward, such as
“Each person, a black-clad spark of soul,
pulled by the inexorable gravity of
survival. Together the seething mass of
humanity ran. In their black mourning
clothes, they were like primordial
darkness churning. The light of humanity
in their hearts bound each to the other as
if to birth a new galaxy of life, in
Warrior Town.”
It’s obvious Lynette knows how to write
powerfully. I also appreciate how real and
down-to-earth the language is, how honest
and wholesome this book. It’s hip in a DIY
kind of way, with Lynette doing a tour on
bike for this book as activism inspiring
others to follow their dreams and stand up
for peace, and play. It also is a great
example of what David Shields call for in
his manifesto Reality Hunger, which is
taking the world by storm now. Lynette
Yetter’s Lucy feels real, and the events
occurred in the way that anything occurs
in our memories—as fiction–stories we’ve
told ourselves repeatedly and bundled into
plot packages.
One of the things I like best is that she
includes the vantage point of manifesting
and finding our future—and doesn’t just
include the times her intentions worked.
Her idealism, naïve ideas of the
simplicity of finding her heart’s desire
are sweet, and ironic when faced with
reality. She manages to keep her humor
about the ups and downs that causes,
though she feels such things very
passionately, and they can shake her. Her
naïve idealistic determination makes her
follow the sound of pan pipes to Peru,
where she plays in various venues, joining
in with indigenous musicians, as she
believes the sound can help create visions
of harmony for others as it did for her.
She believes she can make a difference to
bring more peace to this world through
them. But it’s just that quality, and her
passionate empathy and love, that create
the inspiring events of this book.
Lucy takes on oppression and segregation,
pointing out the false flag of 911, the
cultural imperialism of missionaries, the
modern tendency to block people out of
simply going out and camping under the
stars, and she wonders at anomalies of
government/military connections. In South
America, she plays indigenous peasant
music only recently made legal, and has no
trouble associating with citizens in
the Andes who disrespect unfair political
authority, and encourages harmony in
dangerous situations. Even in competitive
traditions she fosters a sense of oneness.
She acknowledges how magical the world is
through synchronicities such as running
into the man who wrote a song she was
playing. Yet, this isn’t a treatise on
creative visualization. The irony that can
undercut such magic becomes obvious when
she gets to know the song’s author. I love
that combination. She’s not living out
some formula, pretending it always works.
So, when her intentions do manifest, her
visions do come true, they are far more
believable and powerful.
We learn about Andean folklore, such as
the respectful relationship of miners to
the Tios, earth spirits who live
underground. We also learn that kusillos
are androgynous entities who bridge the
known and unknown. And we follow
closely: shocking international business
practices, the role of civil disobedience
in social progress, and the involvement of
the U.S. in civil war. This book made me
cry for a long time, tremble, and even
shout out loud.
David Shields would like her book. In his,
Reality Hunger, which also came out in
2010, he claims “Most, perhaps even all,
good work (or, okay, work that excited me)
eludes easy generic classification: once
we know it’s coloring entirely within the
lines called 'novel' or 'memoir' or
'Hollywood movie,' I honestly don’t see
how anything emotionally or intellectually
interesting can happen for the reader. . .
. Just as out-and-out fiction no longer
compels my attention, neither does
straight-ahead memoir.”
I asked Lynette about the fiction/memoir
interface: “My book and reality. It is
heavily based on my own personal
experience in Peru and Bolivia.
In order to better tell the Truth, to
express Reality, I chose to fictionalize
my experiences. As an old hiking buddy and
PhD in English once told me — fiction is
where we express the deeper truths of
life. In short, she said, ‘Fiction rocks!’
Lucy Plays Panpipes for Peace started out
as pure memoir — emails sent to friends
and first person stories I told at
performance spaces in Los Angeles.
But, it was too limiting to stick to
chronological events and specific people.
By fictionalizing reality I can lump many
people into a single character who then
becomes an archetype. And in that process,
new characters – 100% fictitious – are
sometimes born. My favorite is Aunt Bert.
Aunt Bert came to me in a vision, you
might say. I was riding in a bus along the
shores of Lake Titicaca, when suddenly
Aunt Bert appeared in my mind. She told me
her life story. As I looked out the bus
window at the scenery passing by, I was so
moved by her life that I even cried at the
sad parts. And when I got to where I was
going, I wrote down what she had told me.
That is how Aunt Bert came to be in the
book.
Speaking of reality – to me, Aunt Bert is
one of the most real characters in the
novel – yet she is 100% fictitious.
Reality is so multi-dimensional. On one
hand, it is the material world we can
document with calendars and cameras and
weights and measures. Yet it is also the
invisible realm of the mysterious that
animates all of life – is life. By
fictionalizing the material world, I
strive to reveal the deeper truths of what
is invisible yet is the most powerful
truth of all – our own lives.”
David Shields asks “A character is either
‘real’ or 'imaginary’?. . . . To be alive
is to travel ceaselessly between the real
and the imaginary, and mongrel form is
about as exact an emblem as I can conceive
for the unresolvable mystery at the center
of identity.”
I can feel this book in my heart. I know
Lynette bravely accomplished the amazing
feats in this story, yet it isn’t a heavy
handed recitation of her travels, or an
SGI tract, but a call to go into our
deepest selves, to cry, because there is a
reality there that the fictionalization
allows to live in a moving way, inside of
us. There is no boundary between story and
life, Lucy and Lynette, or our hands, wet
with tears, and the pages they turn, which
catch the light of the sun, that is not
separable from the light of consciousness.
Get
Inspired to follow your dreams!
Review
by Ellen Snortland
"The
blurb on the back cover of 'Lucy Plays Panpipes
for Peace, a novel' is true - 'In many respects,
you are an inspiration to me! You walk the
talk, and live in accordance with your beliefs."
Anyone
who has ever dreamed of learning a foreign
language (or two) and moving to a remote country
seeking a simpler, more authentic life, should
read “Lucy Plays Pan Pipes For Peace.” This
novel, based on Lynette Yetter’s experiences,
opens doors to places and people I never would
have known otherwise and I feel richer and more
whole for the experience.
In a
poetic and musical way, our guide sweeps us
along with Lucy on her quest to Peru and Bolivia
to find or create the peaceful world that she
senses in the sound of the panpipes. I laughed
and cried and felt inspired as if I, too, were
playing the panpipes with indigenous men in
traditional festivals or chewing the sacred coca
leaf with a Quechua family in a humble adobe
house or offering up my own life in protest of
U.S.-supported human rights abuses.
Spiritual
poetry (that amazes me with its creativity),
weaves seamlessly with fascinating cultural
details (that only an insider could know) and
with commentary on globalization as seen from
the “globalized” citizens perspective in a way
that is natural, thought-provoking and
inspiring.
Once I
started reading I didn't want to stop. Also, I
enjoyed the illustrations - they add a whole new
level to the experience of questing together
with Lucy towards this mystical world of which
the panpipes sing.
- Ellen Snortland,
author of “Beauty Bites Beast” and playwright
of “Now That She’s Gone”
Follow
Along as Lucy Discovers the Secret to Living an
Authentic Life on a Daring Adventure from
California to Peru and Bolivia
"If
you know someone with an itch to ditch it all
and immerse themselves in another world, get
them this riveting account. It requires courage
and imagination for Lucy to have done what she
did, but the main thrust of this story is that
if Lucy can do it, so can you. And who can’t use
THAT kind of inspiration." - Ellen Snortland,
author of “Beauty Bites Beast” and playwright of
“Now That She’s Gone.”
Buy
NOW at local and online bookstores
www.amazon.com
www.amazon.co.uk
www.betterworldbooks.com
www.barnesnoble.com
www.powells.com
www.musicandes.com etc
etc etc
LISTEN
to and BUY INKA SPIRIT CD and TELL YOUR
FRIENDS!
"I
would stand on top of a montain naked if more
people would hear about your music. I now listen
to it each morning to motivate me."
- Kathy Lynch
Limited
Edition CD
Lynette
-
My husband now thinks that you'r a musical
genius. I tell everyone I meet about your video
and book. I gave the
information to a depressed California
schoolteacher as a way to boost her spirits. I
sang the chorus all day (of the song Nam Myoho
Renge Kyo).
Having contact with you has lifted my spirits in
the cold, lonely Sado Island-like place where I
work weird hours and have no social life because
of work that needs to be done on the house.
Thank you for being there. - Kathy
Oh
dear Kathy, your words lift MY spirits! :) We
truly need each other. Thank you, my friend. :)
- Lynette
LIFT
YOUR SPIRITS Buy Limited Edition INKA SPIRIT
CD's
Lynette
-
Ahorra mi esposo piensa que tu eres un genio
musical. Yo paso la voz a todo el mundo sobre tu
video
y libro.
Yo di la informaciòn a una profesora de
California que fue deprimida para animarle. Yo
cantè el coro todo el dìa (de la canciòn Nam
Myoho Renge Kyo). Estar en contacto
contigo ha leventado mi animo, en el lugar donde
yo trabajo que parece muy frio y solo como la
Isla del Sado. Trabajo turnos muy estraños y no
tengo una vida social por que del trabajo que
tenemos que hacer en la casa. Gracias por estar
presente.
- Kathy
O
querida Kathy, tus palabras levanta a MI ánimo!
Es verdad que necesitamos una y otra. Muchísimas
gracias, amiga mia. :) - Lynette
Read a chapter
for free ...
|
