Fire and Release - 2025

Letting go in Guanajuato

Another year of wandering while the Kingdom of Doom and its mad monarch raged in the background. The world outside feels unhinged. Here in Guanajuato, I’m learning a different pace.

I am grateful to live as an expat in a colonial city in Mexico’s central highlands. I write this blog and make films. I also study Spanish because life here demands it. To understand the culture and its stories, I speak with fellow Guanajuatenses in their own tongue.

This year I wrote a book on John Coltrane, whose music and life have long inspired me.

I initially focused on his spiritual journey, which drove his music. I locked myself in my office for three months, using AI for research and editing, which accelerated the process.

Studying The Tibetan Book of the Dead as part of my own spiritual journey inspired stories about Coltrane in the afterlife that would close the book. Imagined, yes, but an authentic extension of his brief time on the planet.

After I finished, Sherrie and I took a memorable three-week trip to Morocco, staying with Tucson friends who have a house in Marrakech. When I returned and reread with fresh eyes, the Bardo stories stood out as particularly compelling so I abandoned the traditional biography. Instead, the book became just Coltrane afterlife stories.

Upon further examination, the stories seemed incomplete, not surprising for a first attempt at spiritual fiction. I needed a different approach to the story I wanted to tell.

I settled on a memoir about the role of Coltrane in my life, a much more personal approach. I went back to work. My goal was to self-publish on September 23rd, Coltrane’s 99th birthday. With a potent social media presence, I offered the ebook version for free for several weeks to get reviews that would spark the Amazon algorithm.

September 23rd arrived. The book went nowhere. Few took advantage of a free download. My expectations were unrealistic. The meager results depressed me.

I had forgotten the current reality of book publishing. Books are no longer prominently positioned in our culture. They’re just one option in the non-stop content parade that tries to capture our attention. Two thousand new titles appear daily on Amazon. Add to that the fractured attention of today’s readers. Fewer people now commit to reading a book.

Those who have actually read my book are enthusiastic in their praise. The majority of Amazon reviews and feedback I’ve had from friends and just ordinary readers, has been very very positive. But even good reviews don’t sell a book.

When you create, rejection is always part of the game. Sometimes, you can ignore it, or laugh about it, and sometimes it puts a stone in your shoe.

Because of concerns about my reaction to the book’s publication, I stepped into short-term therapy. My therapist listened and told me I was grieving and needed to focus on that, suggesting I find a local support group. But with the language barrier, I couldn’t put that together.

However, I did remember a curandera I’d visited years earlier as a birthday gift from Sherrie. During her ritual fire ceremony, something had shifted.

This time, before the fire cleansing, I wrote about my grief and brought that with me.

Carolina began with traditional medicines. Rapé burned through my nostrils, sharp and clarifying. Ambil grounded me with bitterness. Mambe sharpened my focus.

Then the fire. I sat wrapped in blankets as she placed damp cloths over my body and poured alcohol across my stomach. She struck a match. Blue flames moved inches from my skin while she sang in Nahuatl. The heat went deeper than flesh.

When the fire faded, her powerful hands released every place holding tension.

At the end, she burned my paper.

“Love stays,” she said. “Paths diverge. Your words will reach those who need them. The rest is not yours to carry.”

“A thing done, the work accomplished, let go. This is the Way of Heaven.”
Lao Tzu, the Tao Te Ching.

On the street afterward, the world looked cleaner somehow, as if someone had wiped dust from glass I’d been looking through. I felt as if I’d set down baggage I hadn’t realized I was carrying.

Since the ritual, I’ve felt different. Not fixed but transformed. The sharp edges of loss have softened into something I can hold without bleeding.

Then I had cataract surgery. The change felt immediate. Someone switched on the lights and the world snapped into high definition.

Not long after, I watched the documentary series, Mr. Scorsese. Marty was my favorite teacher at NYU Film School, starting in 1968. His love of film and his command of precise filmmaking detail revealed a life of intense cinematic study that he was anxious to share. Just a few years later came Mean Streets and Taxi Driver. He was ascending, and soon recognized as a master filmmaker. Even so, he’s been up and down throughout his career. The doc reminded me that creative work rarely moves in a straight line. You stumble, reassess, and return to the work, only to stumble again somewhere down the line.

As 2025 beats a decidedly frenzied gambol toward 2026, I’m pleased to report I have returned to filmmaking with a short film about Coltrane’s final days, a video to help to promote my book. I have finished writing the script for that film, scheduled for release in 2026, marking the centennial of John Coltrane’s birth. And I’ve started doing interviews.

This approach differs completely from my usual filmmaking process. Typically, I begin with a loose idea, conduct interviews, and discover the structure organically as I assemble the material. This time, I already have a script in place, and the interviews serve to illuminate and reinforce what’s already written rather than generate the framework itself.

And I’m back at the Hacienda Spanish School with Luis García, my first Mexican friend. Guanajuato is where I’m spending my remaining chapters. I thrive on the stories of my Mexican brothers and sisters so I’m working to improve my Spanish. Before I relocated, I thought that would take three to five years. No, it’s going to take between eight and ten. But for me every encounter here, which is sometimes limited by my fluency, is gratifying.

At 76, I’m living in a fascinating culture and embracing a different lifestyle. I could have never imagined where I’d be now just a few years ago, or even somewhere in the distant past during my three decades in New York. Life is unpredictable.

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities. In the expert’s mind there are few.” Shunryu Suzuki, Zen monk and author of Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind.

Two very Mexican things guiding me.

Paciencia. One needs deep patience to settle into the flow of life in a different culture.

Poco a poco. A little bit at a time. That’s the only way for me to learn Spanish. And that’s the best way to move through what time remains, with joy and gratitude.

Happy holidays! Let’s hope for a safe, saner 2026.