A Prayer to Existence

For 6 months in early 1996 I attended a Gurdjieff study group (what's known as "the Work") in Oakland, CA, guided by a Kurdish teacher, Manocher Movlai, whose own teacher had been taught by Gurdjieff during the time after the Russian Revolution when Gurdjieff had fled Russia and moved to Istanbul, before ending up in Paris, where his Institute was later to be founded.

Manoch had started out as a student of Sufism, but moved beyond it to the Work. Nevertheless, I think he'd agree that Sufism has many insights still worth sharing: On the bookshelves where Manoch taught us, there was, among other things, a translation of poems by Jalaluddin Rumi, the great 13th century Sufi. I recite one of these poems here over a meditative synthesizer improv. (The title of this piece is of my choosing; the poem itself is untitled.)

Dedicated to Manoch.

9 Megabytes

© 1996 Kai Matthews