Plant Symphonies

Getting ready to process some more fresh Solandra that my friend who spent some time living with the Huichol sent me. He told me that his godfather there taught him that Solandra, or Kieri as they call it, is the counterpoint to Peyote and for me who has found myself coming full circle with these plants it just makes so much sense. There is some archaeological evidence supporting the theory that Solandra used as an entheogen predates that of peyote.

I can’t help but assume that my friend’s godfather’s use of the word ‘counterpoint’ is in the musical sense. ‘In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more musical lines which are harmonically interdependent yet independent in rhythm and melodic contour’ because that is so much how I too see and understand these plants. That is their voice and how some of them do work together.

When I come up with blends for these chocolate nightshade truffles it is not to invent something new, rather it really is like composing music. I listen to who wants to sing together, who wants to make music together. When the blends are right it is like two or more pieces in perfect harmony making a new tone that no single plant involved could make on their own. I obviously can not use peyote in a truffle but I have found something that when I combine it with Solandra does bring out that beautiful harmonic convergence whose elevated hum is capable of transporting us to places we could not find without their combined resonance.