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David & Tiffany Jerard's Mexico Wedding

Darren Miller — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 19:29:59 GMT

David & Tiffany chose to have a FUN wedding. They invited their amazingly loving family and friends down to Cancun, Mexico with them for the week. From a fishing trip with the just the guys to dinners on the beach and a sunrise photo session (and swim!), they set-up each day with great activities and a leisurely warm-up to their wedding day. The weather was amazing and totally on point for the entire day of the ceremony. By the time we busted out the costumes, dancing and fire show at the reception, it had been an amazing day complete with icing on the cake. Congratulations David & Tiffany!

David & Tiffany :: Married!!

Warrior Within Hawaii

Darren Miller — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 08:05:57 GMT

I had the wonderful opportunity to do a quick photoshoot with some of the hot new outfits from Warrior Within Designs on the beautiful beaches and alongside mountain streams on Kauai last week. Many thanks to Amalia Gray and Kaia Shine for their support and amazing beauty. It has been a joy and honor to collaborate with JenJen Patten, the founder of Warrior Within and the troubadour of the Onesie Love revolution.

Views from the Protests at the Democratic National Convention

Darren Miller — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 05:15:00 GMT

There were numerous protests and parades held during the Democratic National Convention in Denver, CO. The Iraq Veterans Against War was one of the larger ones, with possibly four thousand people participating. While the law enforcement presence was strong, they were mostly civil despite their appearances, and there was only one reported incident of tear-gas being used on demonstrators.

Iraq Veterans Against War Protest Parade

Sustainable Living Roadshow Street Fair at the DNC

Darren Miller — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 04:28:00 GMT

The Roadshow hosted a two-day eco-carnival Street Fair in Denver during the Democratic National Convention August 27th and 28th. Workshops, speakers, performances, demonstrations, and green business vending were some of the elements present.

Democratic National Convention & Sustainable Living Roadshow

Darren Miller — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 18:15:00 GMT

The Sustainable Living Roadshow was part of the Green Frontier Fest outside the Democratic National Convention on August 24th, 2008. There was a strong police presence and numerous protesters on many of the streets surrounding this area.

Correspondents from the Daily Show filmed the Roadshow.

Roadshow carnival games.

The awesome sculpture we were set-up beneath.

Learning about worms.

'Freeway' monster truck full-on for oil.

Denver has a sophisticated community free bike-share available.

Electric Tesla.

A loud presence outside the DNC.

83 lbs. of gear - and not a machine gun but mace balls, 'less lethal'.

Fix your leaking toilet...

I'd never seen police this way, we decided against citizens arresting them for riding outside the car

Not news helicopters.

This sun oven cooks at over 325 degrees and made these cookies in 13 minutes!

Sustainable Living Roadshow 'Be The Change' National Tour Kick-off Celebration

Darren Miller — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 02:36:00 GMT

Many performers, friends and supporters were there for the Sustainable Living Roadshow National Tour Kick-off Party at the CellSpace in the Mission District of San Francisco on August 17th, 2008. It was awesome.

Sustainable Living Roadshow @ San Francisco Victory Gardens

Darren Miller — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 06:26:00 GMT

The Sustainable Living Roadshow is a group of educators and entertainers who tour the country in a fleet of renewable fuel vehicles to empower communities and to teach and inspire about sustainable living strategies. The Roadshow had its first event for this year's national tour at the San Francisco Victory Gardens in front of City Hall on August 16th, 2008. I'm honored and excited to be joining and photographing this great group in the coming weeks.

Obama in Hawaii

Darren Miller — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 06:08:00 GMT

I had the great opportunity to photograph Barack Obama in Honolulu on August 8th, 2008.

Australia with my Dad and Kangaroos

Darren Miller — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 06:15:00 GMT

My Dad and I had been talking about a trip for a while and decided to go the south-east of Australia, rent a camper van, and explore around for a couple weeks. We spontaneously made our plans each day and headed south into the chilly Australian 'Alps', where we found ourselves in kangaroo heaven and where we climbed to the top of the highest mountain on the continent. We camped by rivers, made a fire each night, and eventually made our way to the coast, where we were practically the only ones on the endless shell-lined beaches. We arrived back in Sydney having survived driving a top-heavy camper van on the wrong side of mountainous dirt roads for over 1200 miles, and still glowing from our sweet interactions with the kangaroos.

The friendliest and most beautiful kangaroo ever.

Australian kangaroo serengetti (actually the snowy mountains).

A self-portrait and tip: hold your breath and the roo will feel more comfortable being so close.

My Dad's 66th b-day party by a river under the full moon and kangaroo afterglow.

Our view from the summit of the highest peak on the Australian continent, Mt. Kosciuszko.

Blue Gum Eucalyptus trees 'exhale' a blue oil that colors the air in the valleys they populate.

We explored a few of the 21,000 miles of Australian coastline at sunrise each day.

The beaches were covered in pristine and beautiful shells.

Aligning with the sun at the huge sand dunes of Croajingolong National Park.

Jumping around Sydney.

Could holding this man's powerstick/boomerang help my didgeridoo playing?

My Return to The City of Life

Darren Miller — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 18:43:00 GMT

Kashi, The City of Life, is an ancient name for Varanasi, and is said to be the ideal place to die, as dying here brings moksha, or liberation from the cycle of rebirth. It is a city with a three thousand year history of spirituality and is located at the convergence of three rivers. During my first visit here, after ten weeks traveling alone in India in 2002, I engaged with some local amoebas and various anti-biotics could not persuade them to let go of our relationship. Maybe I was on the path towards liberation but I didn't want to die yet. After six days of attempted medicines and avoidance of the Indian hospital, of previously unknown cramp and poo-trauma, I finally checked in and spent five days on intravenous anti-biotics. I emerged from the hospital having gone to bathroom more times in two weeks that in I would in two years, thirty pounds lighter and deathly afraid to be back on the streets of this city that is considered dirty even by Indian standards.

I had wanted to stay and continue my journey through India and around the world when my feet and legs started swelling. Within a few days my feet had become so big I could hardly tie my shoes. Of course no one knew what was happening and so I bought a plane ticket home, an escape plan for life it seemed, and while traveling the swelling continued to rise all the way up to my stomach. I spent my first day back in Honolulu in the emergency room taking every test possible and yet the doctors didn't know what was causing the swelling. They weren't sure if it was some kind of amoebic growth, a lymph-node blockage, a blood-clot, etc., but at the end of day and a full-body cat scan they decided that I was malnourished from my sickness and had lost nearly a third of the blood in my body. My cells were leaking their fluids into the inter-cellular tissue and I had gained 25 pounds of this fluid in five days. All I did for the next two weeks was eat, mostly protein and iron, and sleep. And after another 40 days of western anti-biotics I had mostly recovered from my trip to India. It was traumatic and I was disgusted and wished to never return.

As you can imagine the exciting opportunity to return to India with the Dreamtime Circus brought with it some deeply seated fears and anxiety. However, I had gained some wisdom and had brought with me preventative medicine that I took everyday of my trip (grapefruit seed extract, oregano oil, black walnut seed hull, clove oil, pro-biotics, multivitamins, flax oil, vitamin c and spirulina tablets). I avoided uncooked foods, ice, walking barefoot and swimming in the rivers - and this time I had only minor and quickly-passing stomach issues.

I felt intuitively that it was important to return to Varanasi five years later and in good health, to reflect on life and time passing and to make a full circle of experience from my last time here. I am so glad that I did! I love Varanasi! It is so rich and alive with spirituality and music and creative activity. For six miles Varanasi borders the Ganges River, the mother of all life and most holy of Indian rivers, and is the the only place on the 2000 mile-length that the Ganges turns 180 degrees and flows north towards its source. There is a continuous length of ghats, or steps, going from the city down to the river so that people (and those who have made a pilgrimage to bath in the Ganges) may easily access its sacred waters. The ghats are lined with various Shiva temples (2000 temples in Varanasi!) and boats and places where bodies are burned by a fire that has been kept lit for three thousand years. It is an ancient and holy town and a pleasure and relish to experience.

Upon arrival to Assi Ghat, on the south side of the city, I found the guest house where I'd stayed the last time once I got out of the hospital. The same overpriced-but-discounted-for-me room looking out on the Ganges was available, and the same owner who had convinced me to go home and get well and return was also there. I only had three days to be in Varanasi and each morning I would get up at sunrise and walk the ghats. I walked past the guest house where I'd been thoroughly demolished and sick, played flutes, took pictures, sang, got head massages, drank chai, reflected and gave huge thanks for my life and good health. It was amazing to be here again. I spun fire by the river for two nights with a drummer-friend I'd met in Goa and Chennai. I finally started freestyle chanting during my fire dance and some Indians gave us tips at the end of our show, bakshish as they call it here, usually used as a term for what foreigners pay the police in bribes. Varanasi is a cultural town with a rich heritage in music, spirituality, and history and leaving was so different that the last time. Rather than feeling like I was escaping I wished that I could be staying here much longer and intend to one day return again to Kashi, The City of Life.

A small view of the many activities on the river's edge.

Fishing the Ganga.

Laborers breaking up the road by pick and basket, I wished I could offer a backhoe for them to use.

Stepping on the newest ghat, the cement still setting.

Varanasi is known for its silks and fabrics, a heavenly situation for me.

How hands make poo into fuel for fire.

Temple Cow.

Fire-dancing for the homeless beggar families at Assi Ghat.

My Final Shows

Darren Miller — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 02:36:00 GMT

Immediately following our Cuddalore show we headed five hours north to Chennai (Madras), a sprawling city of seven million, sleeping in the office of the local social activist organization that was hosting us. That next morning we performed at a high school in a more affluent part of town and then made our way through the city to where we would stay for the week, at the Madras Christian Council for Social Services hostel and womens' shelter training facility.

Chennai was massive and took us an hour and a half to traverse by bus. It had stunning brick architecture that was a mix of Arabic and English colonial styles, more billboards and movie theaters (100!) than I'd ever seen, and huge and numerous waterways of sewage and trash. On our couple of days off I enjoyed riding the trains and checking out the most crowded beaches and searching for a good movie that didn't have ridiculous amounts of gratuitous violence. We found one romantic drama that was so corny and cliché, and we laughed so much that we were crying blissfullyfor most of the movie.

We did a show and poi-making/acro-balance workshop for hundreds of kids at an elementary school sponsored by the comparative-religion Theosophical Society. The next day we had a beautiful experience performing for Vidya Sagar, a school and training center for the mentally disabled. They were so endearing and excited about our show, and were very gracious hosts, afterwards giving us each a shoulder-bag and pack of mandala cards that they'd designed. A few of us had been making these patterns ourselves and were really pleased with this gift. The back of the card read: "YANTRA, energy made visible, links all life together. This demonstrates that the disabled everywhere are part of the pattern of life. We, at Vidya Sagar, celebrate this unity. It is through this that we hope to make the inclusion of disabled people possible." That evening we performed our fire show on the roof of our hostel for the women from the women's shelter. I think the impact of ten women in our group being fire performers was empowering and at the end all of them and our group (twelve women and three men) danced together on the roof under the moon and stars in another multi-cultural celebration of life.

After a week in the exhaust and sprawl and heat of Chennai we were ready to leave for the quieter beach and rock-carved temple town of Mamallapuram. We performed here for an English immersion school, Achiever Academy, for poor fisherman children and bright orphans. They were the sweetest kids I'd seen and they were pure joy during the theater games we played with them during the pre-show. I had started freestyle chanting at the opening of each show, as I entered as the 5th Element Rainbow Peacock, and I think I might have frightened these four year olds in my height and odd-singing style.

This would be my last show with the circus and I was feeling at once sad and extremely happy. As I sat out-of-sight alongside the school in my stilts and costume awaiting the closing section for the peacock, I was so satisfied and honored and grateful to have been a part of this amazing experience. As I was crying this beautiful joy I was certain that this was the most enriching and incredible experience of my life, and I had so much gratitude to Chris and Kfire for arranging this tour and for everyone else that had worked to make it possible. It had been my longstanding dream to be on this kind of a travel/social activism/performance tour and I was now completing the experience.

We had a bon-voyage party that night on the beach, admiring the phosphloressence in the ocean and spinning fire - as is our customary celebration ritual. The Dreamtime Circus had welcomed me as a stranger and I would miss this group of kind, talented, free-spirited friends and artists, but I left knowing that our paths would weave together soon again. I had four days left before leaving India and I followed a strong intuitive urge to return to Varanasi, a city in the far north where I nearly died and abruptly finished my last trip to India five years ago.

Chennai movie industry is a big deal, with lots of BLING.

This architecture is common in Chennai for government buildings.

I've never seen a more crowded beach in my life, granted it was a Sunday at the Bay of Bengal.

This girl's focus and talents were amazing.

Baba and monkey-friend.

Achiever Academy kids playing pre-show games.

Acheiver Academy teachers and Dreamtime Circus 'crazy' picture.

Mamallapuram is known for it's rock carvings, and less known for it's temple goats.

At one a.m. on my last night I nearly finished making three pairs of stilts (scary!) for the group, a process that took many many many steps of action here in India. Home Depot is a blessing, and so are pre-made 2x2's!!

My final night with the DreamTime Circus 2008 India Tour, I'll miss you all!!!

A Dancing Collaboration

Darren Miller — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 20:54:00 GMT

The next day we made it to Cuddalore, a small city on the Bay of Bengal, where we all slept on a huge blanket on the concrete floor at the Arcot Lutheran Church's Saint David Fort. The building was 250 years old, situated between a tidal river and the ocean, and the only ornery were patterned crosses for bars on the gates, doors and windows. The four-day Phongal Harvest Festival (like a new year holiday) was in it's culminating days, having burned away the old and was now welcoming back the Sun into the hearts and hearths of the land. The greeting, 'Happy Phongal!', was shared freely during this time. Every morning in these areas women make beautiful colored flour mandala designs on their doorstep, and this next morning I was inspired to make my own lotus/heart/rainbow at the entrance to the fort. It felt good to make this kind of art and it was a good practice in non-attachment to watch it deteriorate throughout the day by the wind and leaves and footsteps of life.

The Arcot Lutheran Church Cultural Exchange Group came one day for a workshop exchange. They were a team of twelve traditional dancers and musicians from Tamil Nadu and they were really talented and energetic and great musicians. We had fun facilitating an acro-balance workshop with them and they shared some of their new work, a mime/theatre piece about the dangers of polluting the well-water. That night we were both performing together at a huge marble-floored, high-ceiling, marriage hall/auditorium. We were told the people of this town usually are mired in poverty and health issues and that our presence was very special and uplifting for them. The local group performed before us and then drummed center-stage while we did the fire dance part of our show. The highlight for me was at the end, when our whole group came on to bow and we encouraged them to stay with us and they continued to drum their high-energy rhythms! Both of our groups danced together on-stage in pure joy and life unrestrained expression for five minutes before all coming together for a big group dance climax and bow. It was an awesome feeling to be spontaneously combining our skills and art in this way and a great way to celebrate the harvest of our dreams.

Accommodations were a little hard sometimes.

Acro-balance workshop was a hit with these dancers.

Part of their dance show they shared with us.

At the Fort with my mandala in front

On-stage at the marriage hall Rotary Club sponsored event.

All of us together after our awesome dance jam bow session!

We often made the print and TV news in these heavy industrial waste regions.

A Trash Dump and A Piece of Heaven

Darren Miller — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 06:52:00 GMT

The past three days of our tour have been incredibly sweet and effective. We were set to perform for the communities living around a huge 40 acre industrial trash dump in the city of Salem (south of Chennai) and the local NGO (Speakout!) arranged for us to stay in the deep countryside at a progressive kids-lead school, the Puvidham Rural Development Trust. We stayed in a huge brick dome house that was designed and largely built by hand by the founder/director/semi-saint, Meenakshi. She is a kind and powerful, motherly visionary who had developed some of her ideas while at the Auraville intentional and sustainable community. Twelve years earlier she had purchased barren land and then planted over 3,000 trees (half of which have survived the continuing seven-year drought) and began to build the school with her life partner.  The main building had eight small adjoining classrooms (our bedrooms) that opened to the central dome room. The cooking was amazing and we loved staying here.

The next day we traveled two hours on ridiculously bumpy under-construction roads into Salem to the literal edge of the massive 40 acre dump. We had expressed a lot of our security concerns to the host organization and the local contact had arranged for some police and perhaps even the local gang leader to be there to make sure things went smoothly! (we only found about the gang leader after the show when we were told that this particular guy was on stage taking a picture of the gathered crowd and our main character was clowning it up right behind him, getting everyone to laugh without him knowing!!) Seven hundred people, local newspapers and tv crews were there and the show went really well. The local Tree Club, a group that provides free saplings and arranges tree-planting events, hosted us for a great dinner at their beautiful house, where they had a tulsi tree growing in an altar that they honored everyday.

The following day we did a workshop exchange with the children at Puvidham school. We had just realized that an exchange would be more ideal than just giving a workshop and when we suggested it (with two hours advance notice) they loved the idea. For our workshops we helped everyone to make poi balls and taught them some techniques for spinning them, played theater games, and gave an aerial tissue workshop. I had thought that teachers would be facilitating their workshops but it was the kids leading and the teachers were there only for assistance and support. We were amazed. They told us what they would be teaching at their stations and then we went around in small groups to learn from these five, six, and seven year olds! They had a great stick dance called, 'boom-boom-boom-chek', that had each person walking and then hitting and then jumping over each others' swinging sticks. The boy who showed us had mistakenly hit the other boys ankle in the demo and I was sure to jump really high when I played with him. They had another stick dance that the girls taught us, more of a dance than martial art, with two short sticks rhythmically clicking while they danced around each other. They had an elaborate story/dance they taught us, as well as origami, top-spinning and a tamil language station.   It was awesome and we had so much fun.

That night we did our environmental show and fire performance for them on their outdoor earthen stage, and they barely stopped laughing and whistling and cheering the entire show. At the end of the show I told them (sometimes translated-sometimes no translation needed) how much we appreciated their vocal expressiveness during our show and how it felt good, and encouraged them to continue to let people know how they are feeling by using their voices and also how much we had loved what they taught us earlier in the day. We made music for them and had a bonfire that night to celebrate the first evening of Ponghal, a yearly harvest festival of burning away the old and welcoming the new sun back into our lives.  It couldn't have been more perfect and it was exactly the paradigm interaction we were hoping for. We felt really good knowing that we had made such a strong connection with this community and positive growth for the circus mission. We wished we could have more time (possibly collaborating on a show) with this school and were sad to leave this sweet piece of heaven.

The amazing school design and poi-making & spinning workshop.

Hannah teaches an aerial tissue workshop.

Duck Duck Goose, an international favorite.

Water-balloon tossing.

During their stickdance workshop, Chris and I were jumping pretty high to avoid their swings!

Before we left Puvidham, in the bright south Indian sun, in front of their stage and painted sets.

Mysore Monkeys and Kabini Snakes

Darren Miller — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 20:15:00 GMT

We continued our journey south and inland to Mysore, a Shiva/Parvatti town that reminded me a lot of Varanasi. There were temples and palaces and generally grand architecture everywhere, one of the most notable was the Parvatti Temple on top of a huge hill. We took a rickshaw to its base where we admired and I hand-fed (for the first time) the sage-like temple monkeys. We then began to climb the twelve-hundred brightly striped red and white steps, past the massive, thirty-foot tall bull Nandi, to reach the top of the mountain Parvatti Temple. Once inside we could see further inside chambers beyond inside chambers to an adorned altar at its core, difficult to see, but apparently very old and sacred. On our way down we passed about two-hundred pilgrims blessing their bus and journey onwards. They had fires in dishes and were circling their two buses chanting with one leading and two-hundred responding, creating an intense and powerful sound. We were amazed as their chanting continued to escalate as they formed a huge v-shaped arrow coming out from the front of the buses and we thought about our own bus and crazy roadway journeys and wondered that this might be a really good idea.

Our performance was in a community outside of Mysore that had been forced from their rural farming villages when the recent Kabini Dam was built and flooded 35 miles of the land upstream. The local NGO we were working with had just finished building a headquarters to field social and medical issues for this community and we were going to perform for their sunset inaugural blessing. On the way we stopped in one group of huts where, our contact told us, 'the poorest of the poor' lived. We were asked to do something improvised with the people staring at us and wondering who we were, so we clowned, juggled, played music and movement games with the kids and generally helped facilitate some joy and laughter for them.

Our show following the blessing went well, however we were all saddened at what happened afterwards. Our main character always plays a snake charming flute with the snake/hula-hooper and this time a brownsnake appeared coiled on stage at the end of our show. We thought that this would eventually happen and many in the group felt honored at its appearance, the snake being an ancient and sacred symbol of wisdom. We were curious and happy and excited - but before we knew it a person from the area had grabbed a large stick was beating it dead. The transition from amazement to shock was so abrupt - and I had to walk away in pain and disgust, dropping to the ground about to cry.  We all felt disbelief but it was clearly not our place to stop, or judge as wrong, this behavior. While we could understand that this might be a normal reaction in this area to snakes it was horrible knowing that we had called this snake there only for it to be killed, and it was extremely difficult to witness what we held as sacred being destroyed.

The sage-monkey inquiring before I gave him any food.

The slightly less peaceful mind of the sage-monkey who wanted more food.  I was feeling vulnerable at this moment and he understood when I kindly told, "Common, monkey, you got to let go of my pants. Seriously."

Playing games with the kids.

Goa - Arabian Sea Oasis

Darren Miller — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 21:42:00 GMT

The long-time Portuguese colony of Goa was our next stop and place of our two-week vacation. It was a tropical Indian beach paradise, with coconut trees everywhere, great inexpensive restaurants, good music, and bamboo huts right on the beach for less than $15/night. I awoke everyday and jumped in the silky smooth Arabian Sea, playing like a child and body surfing the small rolling waves. We stayed on a sand dune bluff in a guest house called Samsara, described to us as both a Heaven and Illusory Hell. It was the first time I'd been to the ocean in India and it was beautiful.

Cows and dogs, fishermen and vendors roamed the beaches alongside European and Indian tourists, and every beach side restaurant/guest house/shop competed for customers with their unique atmosphere, music and international food offerings. The streets were super colorful with all the shops selling really bright and well-designed clothing and fabrics. It was here that I had some rainbow stilt pants and cape made to further expand the rainbows in my life. There was a lot of trash on the beach and one afternoon we all put on our clown costumes and red noses and romped the length of the beach as "trash clowns" excitedly picking up trash and making a spectacle(as our group is apt to do everywhere we go).

Many nights we met before sunset to drink coconut chai, play music, spin fire, and go for a sunset/moonlight swim. The first few nights we searched for the fabled Goa parties of good dancing music and natural settings, but apparently the situation had changed and the local government and/or mafia had effectively stopped these parties from occurring outside of enclosed venues. So when the full moon/winter solstice and new years eve occurred we had our own bonfire and music and stayed up all night spinning fire and dancing on these auspicious evenings. I was also in heaven as I had rented a motorcycle and hugely enjoyed exploring the more remote beaches and areas of Goa. On our last evening, one of the members of our group who is a fire walk instructor, led us on a blindfolded walk to trust falls to bending rebar between two peoples throats to a fire walk. It was pure joy to continue to develop my relationship and confidence with fire. Goa was a great respite from harrowing India and left in early January rejuvenated and ready to do some more shows.

Strutting our stuff for the camera one night in Goa.

Most of our group, plus Cookie Walla, before leaving Goa.

The high wind version of the rainbow peacock.
The Realm of Samsara, where I decorated our hut with my rainbow flags and stayed for 18 days.
Fullmoon setting at sunrise on the morning after the longest night of the 2007.

The DreamTime Circus Tour Bus, definitely comfortable compared with public buses but our knees hit the seat in front and we bounce like ragdolls on most trips.
Cows, our constant neighbors here.
I am very happy when I get to ride a motorcycle!

Two Thousand Year Old Temple Caves

Darren Miller — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 21:54:00 GMT

After a day off and night out dancing we were still reeling from the stoning and trying to piece together why this had happened. What was our part in allowing/provoking this response? How could we learn from this so that we could perform for these types of communities in the future? We had to learn how to better bridge the gap between our two communities and we felt that having circus workshops (poi making, juggling, acro balance, theater games, etc.) with the children/community before the show would be the best way to do this. We had some time to brainstorm our ideas and to take a break from the intensity of the last performances as our scheduled three week period with no shows had begun with our last Mumbai performance.

We headed sixteen hours east to the largest cave excavations in India, a World Heritage Site, the Ajanta and Ellora Caves. They were incredible and I was completely in awe of their size and majesty and age. There were over sixty caves, some over two-thousand years old, built by Buddhists, Hindus, Jains and their predecessors. These caves were carved out of a very hard granite like rock, and most opened up inside to multiple floors with gigantic meeting hall rooms, often one hundred feet wide. They had huge pillars to support the ceiling and painted walls and carved statues covering their interior - many statues of the Buddha were fifteen feet tall. The larger rooms had smaller ones opening into them, maybe monks' quarters, and I laid down on their stones benches/beds and imagined who and how many people before me had laid there. I was often alone and hummed and played my flute in these amazing acoustic stone chambers.

The largest excavation is the Temple of Mt. Kailas, the fabled mountain abode of Shiva. This was carved deep into the rock hillside, with areas open to the sky that were ten stories below the top of the hill. The center area was a massive six story temple surrounded and supported by forty or so life size elephant carvings. It had too many temple rooms to count, and each one had ornate and often tantric carvings honoring different aspects of god/dess. One room had over two-hundred bats hanging from the ceiling and I stood at the edge of this moving/flying mass listening to the resonance of their chirp-clicking sounds. At the inner chamber heart of Mt. Kailas, with fires and incense burning, was a five-foot wide Shiva Lingam, the phallic black stone that is the sacred symbol of Shiva. With my feet firmly on the ground I stood for a while and pressed my hands against this powerful symbol of earth and transformation, with the full intention to absorb the gift of its ancient presence. I imagined the jubilees and gatherings that must have happened here over time and felt extremely honored to be there.
Mt. Kailasa Temple Excavation at Ellora Caves.

The Shiva Lingam at the heart of temple.

Ajanta Caves, at the bend of a beautiful river gorge.

One of the nearly two-thousand year old caves.

A Harrowing Experience

Darren Miller — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 04:01:00 GMT

We arrived to the venue the next day by driving down a long narrow one lane road filled with people and shops and carts and goats. We honked our way and made slow progress past piles of rotting fish and we wondered at how this could be the only entrance to the mosque we were scheduled to perform at. Eventually we pulled into a huge dirt field, no mosque in sight and a hundred kids immediately were surrounding the bus. There were women teachers with sticks keeping some order and we decided to go ahead with the show and be ready for a quick get-away, should it come to that again. I was invlolved with pre-show entertainment of spinning huge furry pompom like poi with a rainbow wig and butterfly mask and rainbow stripped everything costume. It was intense to be in such color and look out to see women in black with only their eyes showing. Judging from the laughter and cheering and clapping, the show went great and everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. We had to stop our amplified music at one point while a funeral took place somewhere nearby, and the host organization was putting a lot of pressure for us to finish by sunset so as not to interfere in their prayers. The show was packed with maybe seven hundred people having gathered by the end, just around sunset.

Once we finished the women with sticks kept the kids in order for about half a minute and then I heard the loudest most excited sound as literally hundred of kids crossed and rushed into the stage area. I was still on stilts doing some post-show entertaining while we packed up and this was scary! We all made it for the bus again, and we were surrounded while they cheered and hit on the bus with their hands. We started to drive away but the road was so small we hardly moved. The kids were on a small hill next to the bus and a couple started to throw rocks. At first we couldn't believe it as moments earlier they were smiling and cheering, but then there were stones hitting every second. The bus was going very slow and we were getting pounded by rocks, screaming ourselves, crouching on the floor and making sure to look away from the windows in case they broke. Eventually a rock broke through and shattered the back window of the bus and another rock hit our driver's assistant in the head. It was crazy and surreal to be in this aggressive and escalating situation, and this continued for the five minutes that it took us to make it through entire length of the narrow road.

The rocks stopped hitting us once we made it to the main road and we were all completely shocked and overwhelmed with emotions and reactions. Why did they stone us? The only explanation I could understand is that they were so excited by our show and wanted contact with us, that when we left so quickly they were unsatisfied and became frustrated and this was their only way to make contact and express their frustration and anger. It was terrifying for all of us and we decided to cancel our third and last Mumbai show. This experience gave us a lot to think about how to bridge a real connection with different groups, as we definitely wanted to continue to perform for impoverished and displaced communities.

The Rainbow Peacock.

There was a lot of excitement immediately following our show.

From Rural Villages to Bombay Slums

Darren Miller — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 06:33:00 GMT

The afternoon my rainbow peacock costume was finished I took a rickshaw to meet up with the circus in the end-of-the-road village of Bhopoli, and I arrived just as they were beginning their show for four or five hundred people, mostly children under three feet tall. The show went smoothly and the host organization, a non-profit homeopathic hospital that delivers medicine to villages without roads, put us up in at their hospital complex for the next couple of nights.  Twelve of us stayed in their beautiful bamboo house - the night was clear, dark and full of stars, chirping crickets and appreciative Americans - and the next day we toured a nearby village and learned about the grassroots medical aid work they do.

We traveledto Mumbai (Bombay) next and here we stayed for five days at the St.Pius Seminary, a green oasis in the midst of a lot of people, honkingand exhaust. We are a very expressive group, in our appearance, styleand sound, and I think the Indian Catholic priests-in-training sangtheir own songs of brotherhood a little stronger in our presence. During this time I was introduced to the circus' cabal system, wheresmall groups meet on different topics to make choices andrecommendations to the larger group, and we had rehearsals to reworkparts of the show. The environmental themes of deforestation and waterpollution are partly shown through elemental characters (earth, water,fire and air), and we developed a stilting and flute playing role forme as the fifth element rainbow peacock character.

Ournext show was scheduled to be in a huge Mumbai project/slum, and wearrived to hundreds of kids running after our bus and yelling andscreaming excitedly at our exotic presence in their community. It wasvery chaotic and we dispatched a small team to make contact with thenon-profit that worked in this community. There wasn't a clear spaceto perform and we were concerned about security and the only flat spacethat didn't have garbage piles on it or sewage running through it wason top of the septic tank! We decided to skip our full production andinstead to do various clowning entertainments with acoustic music andalso to do our fire show on this concrete space. We knew our securitywas at some risk as the kids were very excited and more and more peoplekept arriving, but we were determined to share our circus with thesetypes of communities, and besides to leave without giving a show mayhave been risker yet.

While theothers began music and entertainment I put on my stilts and the hugeten feet wide peacock costume and walked from the bus to theperformance space. Kids cheered and followed me in this colorfulprocession to the stage area, where I circled around the insideperimeter overhead of the children while they screamed in fear andjoy.  We were in the middle of many tall buildings and there werepeople everywhere in the windows and on rooftops and packed all aroundour rope-delineated stage, maybe eight hundred or a thousand possiblywere present. It was very intense and filled with energy as theyloved the show and particularly our fire performances.

Oncewe finished and bowed they swarmed the stage, screaming and wanting totouch us. This mostly overwhelmed the few men that had been setto provide us our post-show security as it was chaotic in the darknesswith all the hundreds of kids cheering and pushing their way into oursmall group.  We made our best effort to stay together (which wasimpossible) and to make it to the bus safely, with all of our thingsand without being groped. Once we all boarded the bus we immediatelytook off while they slapped on the sides and chased after us screamingfor a good half kilometer. We were scared, flustered, and relieved andwere anxious for our show the next day, performing for a hundred kidson the grounds of a Mumbai mosque.

The Bhopoli village field performance.

The amazing bamboo house where we stayed.

A reflective moment at a well during the village tour we were given.

Downstairs of our dorm rooms.

The local children, as always, are great and very excited to play and interact.
There were more crows in the nearby trees than any of us had ever seen.

We tentatively looked from the back of the bus at the gathering crowds as we reached the dead end of this road and our presumed performance area.

View from the window of our 'safe room' where we gathered to decide if we would do our show.

Birth of the Rainbow Peacock

Darren Miller — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 21:21:00 GMT

I spent my first afternoon back in India waiting for the train at Mumbai Central, sitting outside on the curb playing flute and ukulele while a rotating crowd of five to fifteen men stood around and smiled at me and spoke their best english phrases and requested a hand-shake and demanded to try my ukulele, etc. Sometimes it was presumed I was Hare Krishna because of my orange bag and music, so we sang some hare and namaste songs and generally laughed at each other and passed the time in playful observation of the moment. I could not avoid the fact that I was the distinct and ultra-wealthy minority sitting on the ground surrounded on all sides by unknown men, and I took the opportunity to sincerely attempt to generate around me the protective energy of the Rainbow, Peace, and Om.

Once the time approached to catch the Flying Rane Express I went to get my ticket, and had forgetten that discovering the correct information in India is an essential and precarious first step of the long journey and that every guide has their own recommended path to my destination! The practice for me is to see how calmly, quickly, inexpensively and joyfully I can navigate these riddles of reality and unveil the Truth. The lumbering train did eventually appear and then there was chaos as everyone and me with huge bags poured onto the train looking for seats, and eventually I was again with a new group of friendly men singing songs and answering the usual questions about my name, where I was from, if I was married, how long I would be in India, etc.

I arrived and stayed the night at the Laxmi guest house in Palghar, a town a couple hours north of Mumbai, and the next morning tracked the live music I was hearing to a ten piece wedding band practicing at a nearby Durga temple. I spoke with a young man there about the peacocks painted on the temple and about my desire to make a big backpack peacock costume. He introduced me to an artist friend of his, and the two of them helped me immensely that day and the next, to find appropriate fabric shops, tailors, hardware stores and craftsmen to make this idea a reality. During this two-day, many step process, I was taken around town and introduced to their friends and families and neighbors, welcomed into their businesses and homes for food and chai and a place to sleep, and was respectfully paraded like a trophy dignitary from an exotic world. It was in these first two days in India that the Rainbow Peacock was born into my life.

Sunrise north of Mumbai.

A bunch of rowdy high school boys who didn't take much prompting to throw the shaka hang loose.
In the kitchen with Karan and his mom making Samosas at their family 'fast food' restaurant.
Suresh and his family, an artists who makes a living designing custom decals for trucks and rickshaws, who helped guide me to the best shops to make my rainbow peacock and also opened his home for me to stay with their family for the night.

Two of the guys who had the tools to help design the backpack with me, an all day event.

Two siva sadhus (renunciates) I met who were also playing music on the streets, another unique episode of ukulele ambassadorship for me.

Return to India

Darren Miller — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 21:34:00 GMT

After a thirty-six hour double layover plane ride I arrived into warm and musty Mumbai (Bombay). My stomach clenched tightly as I inhaled my first breaths of smokey Indian air, an instinctual memory of insecurity from my last times smelling this mix of burning trash, diesel and incense. I was waved through customs and once inside the 1970's era yellow and black taxi I headed into the heart of this city of fifteen million for Mumbai Central train station.

The driver wove and honked and dodged our way through afternoon traffic while I played amazing grace on my ukulele, swatted away big lumbering mosquitos (as my malaria meds hadn't kicked in yet), smiled at those around in other cars and on motorcycles, periodically clutching the handle bar of the door and thinking I was actually helping by doing head-checks for the driver, as he performed the captivating Indian road show of constant near collision.

I observed all the various side of the road activities like basket weaving, pot carrying, peeing, showering, pulling carts, squatting, spitting, carnation lei-making, trash burning, toddlers wandering around alone, children playing games and haircuts being given. People made business deals and ate and waited for buses and dogs barked and cows foraged the edges while carts and bicycles and mopeds and rickshaws and cars and trucks all danced in the middle of the street with horns for steps like heartbeats. The productive genius and incredible vitality of India struck me and a deep smile lifted up my spirit as I laughed out loud, "I love India!" - I had officially arrived.