It is my absolute joy to share with you Underground River
A short ceremonial dance film in collaboration with Earthbased Media,
and my first ambient album project, co-composed with one of my favorite humans and musicians Daniel Berkman.
This has been a 15 year alchemical process with the waters of the world. These sounds are infused with years of chasing waterfalls, dreaming with ancestral water fae, exploring hot springs, praying at streams and rivers, empathizing with the melting glaciers, and remembering the original songs of the Elemental Deva's that flow through this world.
Creating this art has been profoundly healing and connective, has led me to collaborate with hundreds of people in honor of the waters of this planet. It has been a place where I have found belonging in ways I have longed for since I was a child.
My prayer is that this album becomes a companion for you in your morning practice, a gentle bath you can relax into, a place you can soften into the undercurrents of your emotional body, and a sanctuary in which you can re-connect to the sacredness of your day.
Come add some songs to your playlists!
May all beings be free
and be nourished by the Underground River that connects us all
Thankyou for receiving this prayer
This listening guide and ritual manual is designed as a companion to the album "Underground River"
This body of work was offered as a deep prayer both to and for the waters of the world and the waters of our bodies.
It is a devotional gift to the spirits of those waters, and a call to awaken the elemental wisdom within.
A short documentary by Ayurprana+ about the creation of this work
Story of the Art :
Water Deva was created as the cover art for ‘Underground River.’ Many years ago I had a dream about being a water spirit, existing in essence form within the water. The life of the Water Deva’s was one filled with moving, singing, and making beautiful shapes with other water fae. Together, through our synchronized expressions, we would generate seeds of light underwater, which would give form to all aquatic life. At the time, I was struck by this imagery, and envisioned creating an album of music expressing what those songs must have sounded like.
In 2021, I experienced a period of deep grief and was having a difficult time creating art in her customary form. I felt the need to pursue accessing a more vast spectrum of emotions from the somatic into the subterranean realms as a way to move the emotions through my body, rather than through words. I recalled her dream of the Ancestral Water Deva’s, and called on their songs to help connect to the underground streams of life that moved within the waters of the world, the waters of raw emotion, and the waters of my being.
Together, with my long-time friend and collaborator Daniel Berkman, we composed a wordless body of work that is an impressionistic soundscape demonstrating the emotional landscape of the Underground River, invoking the sounds of these water spirits, forming seeds of light inside the listener. One is reminded that you can still see their dance and hear the original songs anytime you visit a fresh spring, waterfall, or sit beside the wild rivers or creeks. Their original song of life, sung by the Water Devas exists even in the waters of your own being.
I shared this concept with Danielle, who painted the beautiful ‘Water Deva’ as an oil painting expression of this dream. Influenced by cymatics- the mandala-like images that sound makes when vibrating in water, and the visions of water fae giving form to life through their songs, dance, and prayers. Danielle brings her signature style of reverent tapestries of wonder embedded with ancestral wisdom to this radiant aquatic piece. Looking closely inside the image, you can see it teaming with life, alive with the histories of the subterranean realms, the sacred caves beneath the surface, the water dragon weaving the tale, breathing life into the underground river that connects us all. Here the Water Deva is depicted as toning, along with several other water fae, shaping a mandala of light seeds that ripple out into the bodies of waters across all time.
A Portion of the Proceeds to go towards Only.One Ocean Conservation
water ceremonies in several communities to weave the rivers together
A beautiful part of this project has been bringing water ceremonies to different communitites, and continuing to weave the underground river as an international group art installation. So far we have offered water ceremonies in 3 different communities. More about this aspect of the underground river story coming soon.
Stills from Water Ceremony in Asheville, N.C and Earth Daughters Festival in B.C.