Your Stage : Kin to the Wind -Journey Around The World With No Money by Moro Buddy Bohn

Kin to the Wind--A Troubadour's Magical Journey Around the World With No Money www.moromusic.com Travelers' Tales has published my book, Kin To The Wind - A Troubadour's Magical Journey Around the World With No Money. It became a Book of the Year Award nominee. Here's a sketch of the story. At age 19, just to see if it could be done--if there was enough love--I began backpacking with guitar. At age 21 I began a multi-year backpack tour that took me clear around the world via 50-plus nations without ever once using money as a means of exchange (not even for visas), performing at royal courts in the 12th-century troubadour tradition. A large mob of Beggars attacked me in Tunis. They had me pinned to the ground near the ancient ruins of Princess Elissa’s palace in Carthage, and were choking me to death—fighting each other for my chest pouch. For some reason it felt like all this was happening to another entity, though it hurt a little. So I wasn’t afraid, even lost consciousness for a moment, woke up, and found I'd been rescued by a robed, cutlass-wielding youthful sage, Bahattin.. He was standing over me laughing because he enjoyed getting in fights which he generally won. He became a special friend and shared with me some deep philosophy. “Armed only with faith, its miraculous healing power, and the love that went into my own kind of guitar inventions, I never thought of the journey as a challenge, just an unfolding gift. “Troubadours performed for royalty, so I serenaded at Fredensborg Palace for King Frederic IX. And during a balmy late summer evening, I played one-on-one for Pablo Picasso who sat three feet from me at a quiet, tree-lined café near his home in Aix-en-Provence. A beautiful Spanish Duchess, Francesca, found me performing with some gypsies in Granada, took me home, and got me visas for several African nations. And Sonya the belly dancer in Algiers included me in her act, dancing to my tune, Mosquito's Dream. Bedouin champagne smugglers took me across the Arabian Desert in their camel caravan. They listened to me play my Undecided Samba (one of them danced to it!) beneath desert stars though it was during Ramadan. I played for supper in many casbahs, beggars quarters, and even aboard HMS Eastbourne, the British warship that took me across the Indian Ocean as guest of the queen. During this voyage we were visited in the Persian Gulf by the Abu Dhabi royal family who came aboard wearing elegant robes and cutlasses. I performed a concert for them in the ward room, together with all the ship’s officers including our skipper, Commander Peter Campbell. He and Abu Dhabi’s leader at that time, Shaikh Shackhbut II bin Sultan Al Nahyan, sat together front and center in regal reserved seats. I also met a ghost in the Himalayas, was offered a fortune to defect by the Communists in East Berlin (which I turned down after considerable inner struggle), and later became court troubadour to King Bhumibol and Queen Sirikit of Siam at Chitra Lada Palace. At the royal couple's request, I recorded a whole album for them in their recording studio. I’m still blessed by my memory of mystical moments playing in Bangalore for Maharaja Shrimant Sinapati of Sandur and his amazingly attentive, enchanted ravens. Even as I was enjoying all this and much more, folks continually told me civilization is too corrupt—that it was impossible for me to be doing these things—and warned that I'd never be able to make it like this all the way around the world. Bewildered by their pessimism, I just smiled at them and continued riding the huge wave of my faith that love is in charge. This wave was so strong as to be a kind of magic shield that defended me from problems, enabling me to surf over them—so strong it created what seemed a worldwide conspiracy that I get looked after. And in the end I decided our world here is a better place than the fabled Eldorado. For here the roads are paved not with mere gold, but with love. This truly nonfiction story could be shared via movie or perhaps a mini-series. Just imagine how many people of all ages would like to make such a journey, even if vicariously. I know because I’ve seen the light in their eyes when I tell them about it, and their light has never faded over the years. So I've written a screenplay version. Both the book and play include my most important adventure of all—having recovered overnight through faith from a deadly parasite a hospital doctor and his x-ray had declared was fatal—that there was no hope. My late friend, Saturday Review Editor Norman Cousins, popular writer, visionary and friend of Albert Schweitzer, wrote an entire spiritual book, Anatomy of an Illness. He’d also been told by his doctors that his position was hopeless, but he defeated it with laughter. He described my early travel journals (the basis of Kin to the Wind) as "…a most diverting and picaresque tale, one that reads like a sentimental journey of a hundred years ago."