Buddha unexpectedly appeared while visiting a friend's house yesterday. I have been exposed to Hindu gods and goddesses through Hindustani and Karnatic music lesssons and self-realization but never Buddha before.

My Jetavana unexpectedly became named after Buddha while pondering a connective nomenclature for my new Meruvina composition and realization from a poem by Po Chu-I (772-846):

A jade flute, by angels long ago

Borne as a gift to the Garden of Jetavan!

It blows a music sweet as the crane's song

That Spirits of Heaven earthward well might draw.

At my home in Los Angeles there is a large wooden Buddha that appears to be metal but is actually wood and it is too heavy to move.

A young wife and very young child abuser with a number of felony convictions he never stays in jail for who served in Iraq which is not a Buddhist nation on at least one tour and whose father I was told died when one of the Twin Towers eviserated so he receives a bountiful stipend for life enjoyed putting out cigarettes on the shoulders of the Buddha statue I was told he is an incredibly stupid and ignorant bully addicted to alcohol at least with the shame being he is Jewish and Italian like me he feels entitled to do anything he wishes to because he and his extended family expect to get lots of money for free again this and next year too but the Buddha state seems all the more stronger for it and one day I will get around to painting it back to the original colours or at least blend in something with the same spirit of love I grieve for the statue having had to endure that as I do for the wife and three young boys all of who have blonde hair like Catharine Buchanan who recorded a hit song with Madonna who sang backup vocals for her.

Sidewalk Talk

Music and lyrics by Catherine Buchanan

Watch where you walk 'cause the sidewalks talk
And you can't keep a secret from the ground beneath you
Step very lightly on the earth below
Or before you know it everyone will know

Streets were paved with a thousand eyes
And try as you may you can't disguise
There's only two things that you can't hide from
That's you and the ground you're walking on

Watch where you walk 'cause the sidewalks talk
You better watch what you do, what you do
'Cause the sidewalk talk can get carried away
You better watch what you say, what you say

Think when you speak 'cause you gotta 'long the street
They can read what you say so you gotta stay away
From words that sting, words are not true
And the things you say make a fool of you

Little white lies make the sidewalk cry
And you can betray with the things you say
Words won't last when you say 'em too fast
And you've been mislead by the things you've said

Watch where you walk 'cause the sidewalks talk
You better watch what you do, what you do
'Cause the sidewalk talk can get carried away
You better watch what you say, what you say

When you're living on the street
Life can be full of misery
Find a place to call your own
Make your heart into a home

You can do it... oh.. uh huh
You can do it... uh huh
You can do it... uh huh
You can do it... uh huh
You can do it

After every word there's a place that heard
Every time your shoe hits the avenue
And when you're gone they'll sing a song
Of the stories you told when you felt so bold

You better think twice when you cross the ice
Everything you do comes back to you
When you're shedding a tear sidewalks will hear
When your laughter's true they'll run with you

Watch where you walk 'cause the sidewalks talk
You better watch what you do what you do
'Cause the sidewalk talk can get carried away
You better watch what you say, what you say

Sidewalk talk, sidewalk talk
Sidewalk talk, sidewalk talk
Let me tell ya 'bout
Sidewalk talk, sidewalk talk
Sidewalk talk, sidewalk talk

Watch out for
Ssidewalk talk, sidewalk talk
Sidewalk talk, sidewalk talk

Let me tell ya 'bout (sidewalk talk)
Let me tell ya 'bout (sidewalk talk)
Let me tell ya 'bout (sidewalk talk)
Let me tell ya 'bout sidewalk talk

This guy threatened me once but only on the phone where I had no idea he had actually married his victimized former girlfriend whose three sons were all born out of wedlock.

My strong feeling is that his stipend should be halted because he is a disgrace to all our great veterans from all the wars including my Uncle Burt who served under an unknown general perhaps George Patton in the Battle of the Bulge which he refused to speak about it was very bloody but he attended an annual meeting of the survivors for the rest of his life no matter where it was held. The Battle of the Bulge was the last Nazi offensive of World War II before Adolf Hitler escaped to Patagonia.

Here is Jetavana named for the place in India where Buddha taught his Sutras for your listening pleasure as inspired by Song For Sharon by Joni Mitchell.

Donavan recorded a glorious album named Sutras I love listening to too.

- Michael Eric Robinson Longhi, Kula Maui Hawaii, February 2025

© 2025 Michael Robinson All rights reserved

Michael Eric Robinson Longhi is a Los Angeles-based composer, programmer, pianist and musicologist. His 200 albums include 153 albums for meruvina featured on National Public Rado, Pacifica Radio and University, College and Public radio stations across America in addition to the rest of the world.

There are also currently 47 albums of piano improvisations both solo and duet with Guruji Anindo Chatterjee of India and Eliot Zigmund of the Bill Evans Trio both among the greatest percussionists in recorded history.

Michael's primary jazz teacher was alto saxophonist Lee Konitz of the Lennie Tristano Quartet who would fill in for Charlie Parker when he was indisposed joined by Bud Powell, Charlie Mingus and Max Roach, lead soloist with the Stan Kenton Orchestra that included Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Levey and Bird, led a quartet featuring Billy Bauer, Don Bagley, Arnold Fishkin, Miles Davis and Roach, performed at the first Newport Jazz Festival with Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Sarah Vaughan and Dave Brubeck with Paul Desmond and Joe Morello before becoming strictly a solo artist with various accompanying musicians like Hal Galper, Chick Corea, Red Mitchell, Joe Henderson, Elvin Jones, Jack DeJohnette, Peggy Stern, Blue Mitchell, Bill Evan, Alan Dawson, Phil Woods, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Stan Getz, also Hank Freeman of the original Artie Shaw Orchestra who recorded Begin the Beguine and Dinah Washington would later never record without him playing lead alto, Charlie Colin, Rollan Masciarelli from Columbia University in NYC, Ray Shiner of the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra who earlier did the arrangements for Benny Goodman (he being Lee and Bird's primary jazz Guru together with Lester Young, Lennie, Artie and Louis Armstrong) and New York Philharmonic, Reggie Johnson featured on Archie Shep's greatest album, Makambo Ken McIntyre who founded the first jazz program in the USA and Paul Jeffrey of the Thelonious Monk Quartet.

His primary Western Classical Music composition teachers were Adele Berk, Don Funes, John Cage and Steve Reich, also Morton Feldman, Leonard Bernstein, Gunther Schuller, John Chowning, La Monte Young, Robert Washburn, Eliot Del Borgo, James Ball, Arthur Frackenpohl and Perry Yaw.

Longhi's primary North Indian Classical Music teachers were Harihar Rao of UCLA, the senior disciple of Pandit Ravi Shankar who invited Michael to study with him too, Pandit Shivkumar Sharma who reinvented the ancient folk music instrument Voice of A Hundred Colours the Indian santoor which is a powerfully influential precursor of our Western keyboard instruments including the piano anticipating Robinson's Meruvina realization and conecption, Nazir Ali Jairazbhoy of the Oriental Music School in London, England who was born in a Palace on the Indian Ocean in Bombay a Hindu family that converted to Islam working in forest trees, Pandit Jasraj The Sun of Music in India, Popat Savla, Ustad Zakir Hussain, Pandit Ram Narayan and N. Rajam from recordings, Kala Ramnath, Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri and his current Guruji is Pandit Anindo Chatterjee.

His over 400 essays mostly about music have been used by Carnegie Hall, New York University, the University of California at Berkeley and Los Angeles and New York University.

Michael has been a lecturer at UCLA, Bard College and California State University Long Beach and Dominguez Hills, the Pasadena California Libraries and Wantagh High School in Nassau County on the South Shore of Long Island in the State of New York.

Robinson has performed in the New York City Libraries, the Beverly Hills California Library, La Mama La Galleria and the Knitting Factory in Manhattan, Hunter College of New York City University and myriad churches in Manhattan New York City, Los Angeles County including the first Film Festival of India and Maui Hawaii to name a few.

Michael was born in French Hospital in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan later named Chelsea where The Godfather was later filmed and has lived in Borough Park Brooklyn, North Merrick in Nassau County Long Island, Wantagh named for a Chief of the Montauk Native Americans, the Upper East Side of Manhattan, Beverly Hills and Los Angeles California and Kapalua and Kula Maui Hawaii the Aloha State.

The above bio is a brief ongoing summation due to limitations of time and Akasha and have everything to do with Johnny Winter an albino from Texas being the greatest rock guitarist in recorded history the electric guitar being the essence of rock, the piano the essence of past Western classical music, the saxophone being the essence of jazz and the Meruvina being the essence of computer music the current chief manisfestaion of Western Classical Music.

Michael will soon be adding alto and tenor saxophone recordings to his oeuvre together with the gatra vina.