Insider info. While considering what image to post with the lyrics to my song, rather than create an entirely new painting, I found this favorite 1998 watercolor of a friend's backyard garden in the Schaerbeek neighborhood Brussells where I landed and exited my European tours. Thanks to Monique and Arnaud for such extra hospitality.

Traditionally, at this time of year, my Roswell Incident song takes precedent because that scene is set at the beginning of July. My Oppenheimer song waits till early August because, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This year, however, an onslaught of publicity is about to crest for the new Christopher Nolan movie about JRO. So, while there is still plenty of UFO/UAP press, which never seems to go away, I've already written plenty about my Roswell experiences and thoughts (at least at the time of my writing). So, while this post is not actually about Oppenheimer, it's timely and I do love the above photo by Phillipe Halsman of JRO. So...

Where does the creative process begin? What is the initial spark that kicks on the ignition of an idea, unleashing a string of things that weave a form begging to take shape on the material plane?

A fragment of bird song turns George Meredith's head and he watches a skylark ascend, singing. He turns what he beholds or imagines into verse. Years later, Ralph Vaughan Williams reads the poem and is compelled to compose a piece of music for violin, the lark, and piano. Marie Hall helps Vaughan Williams illustrate the flight and song of the lark through the medium of her instrument.  Later, the composer orchestrates the piece and that is mostly how we know The Lark Ascending today. "The silver chain of sound" reverberates from bird song to idea to poem to duet to orchestral piece to all of the recorded and unrecorded interpretations and inspirations since. 

In 1982, while living on 5th Street in Santa Monica, I watched Sam Waterston play J. Robert Oppenheimer on the BBC Series, and thought, "I must write a song about Oppenheimer". The process of writing the song commenced.

The only book I could find about the Manhattan Project was Robert Jungk's  personal account, Brighter Thank A Thousand Suns. I checked that book out of the library with a copy of John Donne's Holy Sonnets. The Holy Sonnets, especially XIV, gave me the idea for the framework and form of the lyrics and musical parts along with a literal quotation.  The rest of the song worked its own way out.

I had no inkling at first thought that I would build the song around the concept of Trinity, that I would regularly perform the song at anti-nuclear rallies over the next couple of years, or that a decade later I'd become friends with two physicists who'd worked on the Manhattan Project and knew Oppenheimer. One of those men was Francis Low (who accompanied me on piano in empty classrooms as I was reviving my vocal chops) and he worked at Oak Ridge in Tennessee. The other was Tony French who I was shocked to learn (when I finally asked him exactly what it was he did at Los Alamos) that he was Edward Teller's assistant. I've since wished that I'd asked him more but at that moment, I checked my curiosity.

I also never could have guessed that someone I gave a copy of my brand spanking new Souvenir CD (for which I finally recorded the Oppenheimer song) would take my conceptual framework and, without acknowledgement, turn it into a libretto for an acclaimed opera.

But that's another story. But not unrelated to the question of where ideas come from, the creative process, and working through that process. And it is work. A lot of work. But not the kind of work that you can always point to or assess by how many hours are spent on sets of tasks laid out on a particular schedule. Working through the creative process is a matter of opening up to chance, following your nose, picking up books at random, turning left instead of right down an unfamiliar street, and browsing, lots of browsing through printed words, pictures, videos, recordings, and whatnot, and paying attention to something that leaps out and says, I am your next step. Pay attention to me.

That's one part of the work. Grazing for clues but not too intently.

I often graze on rather than read books and I am not a fast reader, unless I’ve found a page turner. I read contemplatively by which I mean that I'll read a little and then reflect on it. Inevitably, I'll go down rabbit holes, looking up words I don't know, chasing down references. One distraction after another. I don't mind so much because I enjoy grazing books and am easily distracted.

Every once in a while, I’ll re-read Ray Bradbury. I love his poetic fiction but his introductions are worth the price of each entire book and are directed squarely at writers, or really anyone involved in the creative process.

His introduction to Dandelion Wine opens as follows:

“This book, like most of my books and stories, was a surprise. I began to learn the nature of such surprises, thank God, when I was fairly young as a writer. Before that, like every beginner, I thought you could beat, pummel, and thrash an idea into existence. Under such treatment, of course, any decent idea folds up its paws, turns on its back, fixes its eyes on eternity, and dies.”

A couple of pages later, he continues:

“Thus I fell into surprise. No one told me to surprise myself, I might add. I came on the old and best ways of writing through ignorance and experiment and was startled when truths leaped out of bushes like quail before gunshot. I blundered into creativity as blindly as any child learning to walk and see. I learned to let my senses and my Past tell me all that was somehow true.”

I firmly believe that creativity demands hours of practice and the discipline to settle down and do the actual work of designing, building and polishing any creative form. But when it comes to conjuring ideas, I surrender to magic, instinct and discovery.



Worth listening to:
The Rest Is History Podcast— Oppenheimer: The Father of the Atom Bomb and The Witch Hunt.
 the BBC Series

"I watch the choppy, shining sea
as I walk beside the sliding waves.
On the sand, in the sun, at the shore
breathing hazy air, bright white and brave

filled with liquid, brisk, exquisite sounds
I am found, content and most secure
where everything is moving
and the sand is shifting evermore."

--Suzanne McDermott, from Mine for Good, 1995

Mine for Good is a little love song to the Garden State, to the sea shore, and to embracing change. I wrote it while walking along Cape May beach after a big October storm. The place was littered with huge knobbed and channeled whelk shells, some of which I am looking at right now.

Any coastline is a space of constant change. Water alters land. Remains are deposited and retrieved. Life and death and mysteries abound. Colors shift in the blink of an eye. Wind slaps waves and splatters sea foam. Salt evaporates. Sand gets into everything. Ghost crabs skitter and steal. Birds fish. Rays flap. One day the surface of the sea is still and silky. The next day, churning and explosive. Although the level of drama depends on the sea in question, there is never a dull moment along any coastline.

The world at large has started to feel like a long, dramatic coastline. So many of our individual lives have shifted or are shifting in ways we may never have imagined. But the fact is that the world has always been in a process of constant change, as have our individual lives.

Leaves fall, snow drifts down, winds whip up, new green shoots appear, and summer comes in. Coastlines have always been shifting. Our bodies, minds, and orientation in space and time are different moment by moment. Change is decidedly more dramatic now thanks in large part to anthropogenic climate change. Try as some people might, there's no getting around that fact. But that's not the only cause for the drama.

At some point, we got it into our heads that life is stable, that we can rely on facts and material assurances. This may have been true for some, or even for many for a while. But it isn't true anymore. In fact, it's often not clear what is true anymore.

If we've made up our minds that life should be stable, well, that makes facing change that much more alarming and difficult to navigate. If we cling to some illusion of normalcy, we're resisting change and actually clinging to the past which doesn't exist anymore.

Contending with change involves accepting considerable uncertainty. We like to think that we can control an awful lot of our experience and uncertainty is a control freak's nightmare.

I think that there are two keys to riding the waves of change. One is to recognize that we can only control ourselves. The other is to practice being present, here and now. Easier said than done. Interestingly enough, these are also the two keys to surfing.

And what do you know, going within and learning to know ourselves so that we can control ourselves, and being here now are the keys to a fully realized human life.

In the late summer of 2002, I recorded my last album of songs in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. Ankie Keultjes produced, CRS/Rounder Europe paid for the production and manufacture, and I was able to work with two of my fave musicians, Eric van der Lest and Menno Romers. Much of this was thanks to Ankie (who helped produce Ephemera) and Ad van Meurs with whom I stayed and performed while in Holland during each of my European tours.

By the time I finished recording The Glory, I was out of money, energy, tricks, and all of the other things it takes to support and sustain a career as a singer songwriter uninvolved with the “star maker machinery behind the popular song.” It’s a shame because without any promotion or further touring, The Glory was lost and I really love many of the songs we recorded.

Until I unwrapped a CD copy just now, I'd completely forgotten that I included this quote in the liner notes:

If you are entering my Roswell chronicle here, I suggest that you start at the beginning, My Road to Roswell, and work your way forward to this fifth and final part that I write on the eve of the Pentagon's highly anticipated report on UFOs or UAPs. At least go back and first read the previous part, Klaatu Barada Nikto

When I wrote The Roswell Incident, I could never have imagined the voyage on which I was about to embark, the ongoing surprises the song would present, and the people I would meet along the way.

Although I am obviously fascinated by the subject, I am not a UFO Enthusiast. However, I am quite sure that something extraordinary happened outside of Roswell in 1947.

The human experience of UFOs is as old as recorded history and it persists. If you study the history of art, you will find a whole lot of flying objects in the skies from the Hand of God,  to angels to, well, they sure look like what we think of as flying saucers. But then, the mindset and archetypes of Robert Campin  or Carlo Crivelli, for example, are radically different from say, Mark Rothko.

If these phenomena are extraterrestrial, and the Pentagon claims empirical proof that they choose to share publicly, the result would require whatever humans happen to be paying attention, to shift their fundamental world view. Also, it could be an entertainingly novel way to control the population. Just sayin’.

In Ezra Klein’s astute NYT Op-ed on the topic last month, he referred to the former NASA chief historian, Steven Dick who

“…has argued that indirect contact with aliens — a radio signal, for instance — would be more like past scientific revolutions than past civilizational collisions. The correct analogy, he suggests, would be the realization that we share our world with bacteria, or that the Earth orbits the sun, or that life is shaped by natural selection. These upheavals in our understanding of the universe we inhabit changed the course of human science and culture, and perhaps this would, too.”

But upheavals in our understanding of the world do not happen overnight. Not by a long shot.  Copernicus published his heliocentric model in 1543. By 1632, Galileo had proved it. It took the Catholic Church until 1835 to fully and formally accept that the earth was not the center of the universe. Ideas take time to unfold within a culture.

On the other hand, the mindset of an individual has been known to change overnight. One example would be a born again Christian. One day a sinner, the next day saved.

The brain, you can pummel with drugs and vibration, extract and dissect, define and otherwise mess around with. The mind, though, or consciousness is something that you can point to, experience, and certainly discuss, but you can't say this is it and I've put it in a box.

Flying saucers or no flying saucers, extraterrestrials or no extraterrestrials, we, the terrestrials, need to shift our fundamental world view anyway. This is what some people refer to as the paradigm shift.

During the pandemic, I was stunned but not surprised at how many people were clamoring to get back to “normal”.

I was stunned because we are living in a world where what is considered normal is not working on so many levels. In all sorts of ways and daily, people are losing their minds left and right. This does not indicate a norm or reality that is working very well. The results of so much of our normal behavior and actions are literally disastrous.

I was not surprised at the call to return to normal because of the alarm over the almighty economic engine. Also because disruption of routine and change, in general, is disorienting and scary. Our isolation was not helpful but instructive.

The disruption of the pandemic has given us an opportunity to literally retool the results we are creating. It would be a shame if we were to just fall back into a pattern of thoughts and behavior that has been creating destructive results not only for ourselves but for our planet and remaining fellow species.

This issue of mindset and paradigm change is an integral part of the coaching practice. As a trained individual who works on personal growth for myself, and especially as a coach for others, I have to coach myself daily on my own thoughts and behavior and question the results I experience.

If we are unhappy with the results in our world and/or in our personal lives, we absolutely have to change our thoughts in order to create different results.

All great athletes understand this. Timothy Gallwey called this the "inner game" and is credited with the revolutionary approach he outlined in his books starting with The Inner Game of Tennis in the early 1970s.

But this idea of changing one’s inner game, one’s mindset, and even more deeply our personal paradigms goes way back to Thomas Troward, James Allen, Wallace Wattles, Napoleon Hill, and Earl Nightingale, to name the old school biggies.

Although it's a bit more complicated than this, their basic agreed upon premise is that in order to change your life, your results, or your reality, you must change your thoughts.

And since we’re not disembodied minds roaming around, I’ll take it one step farther, especially in our current, severely overstimulating environment. There is an awful lot to navigate logistically, technically, socially and emotionally in the world as we know it right now. It's exhausting.

We absolutely have to take care of our physical bodies which house our minds and our spirits, and learn to regulate our nervous systems, the networks of our brains. We need aligned connection and support, accountability, courage, and discipline.

“We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” -Teilhard de Chardin

Averse in any way to the idea of spirituality? How about this for a working definition?

“Spirituality is the pursuit of a mental and emotional state in which you feel at ease and at home with yourself, your place in the world and your relation to others. It is a state in which you feel in touch with your most authentic or core self and you feel connected to yourself and other people. There is an ease and a fullness to it.” --Weston at Root Lock Radio

Personally, I think that taking very good care of ourselves on every possible level while taking charge of our thoughts and reality is the only way we’re going to navigate this wild, wild passage of collective and individual experience. If you can only do one thing, remind yourself on a regular, daily basis of who is in charge of your perception.

The military is not in charge of unidentified phenomena or your truth or your reality. You are. Your thoughts create your reality.

How is your reality working for you? What kind of results are you experiencing? Don’t like ‘em? You can change ‘em.

But be prepared. Change, not to mention changing a personal paradigm, will make you extremely uncomfortable. It’s worth it though. Whether you want to change the world or just your own reality, what’s a little discomfort in the grand scheme of things?

If Unidentified Flying Objects are part of your reality, well, then, so they are.

The truth is not out there.

The truth is within.


©2021 Suzanne McDermott (All Rights Reserved)

Did you enjoy reading this? Has it given you food for thought or helped to expand your perspective? If you are able, please appreciate with a contribution here. Every little bit helps. Thanks!

This is the final part of a five part series about the story, to date, of my song, The Roswell Incident.

Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.

Make sure you're subscribed in the sidebar to be notified of future weekly posts.

Listen to The Roswell Incident on YouTube,  iTunes,  Spotify.

Klatatu Barada Nikto

One of the first questions usually asked when the subject of UFOs arises is “Do you believe in UFOs?” This issue of belief can be found somewhere in almost any article, book, or discussion about the subject.

Naturally, I have been asked if I believe in UFOs. I’ve always found this question curious. What else are we asked if we believe in? God. Miracles. Ghosts. Love at first sight. The more appropriate question, to me, would be, “Have you ever seen a UFO?” No. Not to my recollection. I have not.

The issues of belief, belief systems, and communication is critical when it comes to this business of UFOs.

How do we come to believe what we believe?

Oscar Hammerstein III wrote that You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught. That’s true. It’s also true that you can be taught to think for yourself, to be discerning. And, there are always those nebulous personal influences that shape us, too. Whatever we’re taught, whatever we learn, it is always in the context of and relationship to the construct of, let’s say, our collective agreed upon reality.

Not long after Roswell, I remember a fellow songwriter asked me what I really thought about the whole thing. The best response that I could come up with was that we do not have the language to describe the phenomena in question or the related experiences people have had. That would still be my response today or certainly part of it.

I thought it worth examining, as briefly as possible, what early experiences influenced a belief system that allowed me to write a song about a subject that other writers traditionally treat as a novelty, and with derision or mockery.

First of all, I was raised Catholic which inherently allows for belief in alchemical works, transubstantiation, resurrection from the dead, all manner of celestial events, appearances by beings of light in various times and locations, the sacred intelligence of light, and of course, miracles. These are just a few of the magical elements in that particular construct of belief which I think primed me to consider all sorts of possibilities. Because Catholicism also includes a wonderful panoply of symbols and archetypes, it gave me the keys to the kingdom of Western art and music which I have studied all of my life. Through the lens of that learning, it’s been tough to miss how dramatically and frequently the collective human mind shifts its perception of the world and how individuals might arrive at and then change their beliefs.

It was in kindergarten that I was first struck by a Catholic belief. I heard that god has no beginning and no end. That led to me lying in bed at night going back in my mind as far as possible into the past and then ricocheting as far forward into the future as I could stand. Then back and forth and back and forth again. Much better than counting sheep, that exercise stretched my little mind a bit and made me forever curious about time.

My father and I had a profound bonding experience when he took me to a matinee of Forbidden Planet when I was about six. Because he knew Shakespeare like the back of his hand, my father explained to me how the film was loosely based on The Tempest and pointed out the spiritual elements of the story. Naturally, what followed was a regular weekly diet of The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, and most of the old school sc-fi flicks.

In middle school, I was required to read the Stephen Vincent Benét story, By the Waters of Babylon. That story impacted my thoughts about time, language, perception, and instilled a healthy skepticism about contemporary interpretations of pretty much anything historic including art, artifacts, technologies, ideas. I'm sure that it primed me as well to write The 3 Dreams of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Later, I read plenty of Azimov, then mostly titles from the original UK series of Penguin Science Fiction including Olaf Stapeldon's Sirius and J. G. Ballard's The Drowned World.

I would say that all of these stories in whatever form presented were moral tales investigating various aspects of behavior, belief systems and the human condition.

That’s a rough sketch of what I think helped form my early understanding of flying saucers and related matters, and probably why it never occurred to me to treat that subject with a giggle factor.

Something extraordinary happened outside of Roswell, New Mexico, in early July, 1947. That much I trust is fact. I don’t know what happened. I wasn’t there. But I do trust the reports of the ordinary citizens who witnessed and reported those events. They don’t or didn’t know exactly what happened either. But they were there and they did witness and experience what some of them were able to describe on record. Now, people being people, some of them told the truth and some of them, maybe, embellished a little.

My song, The Roswell Incident is and is not about a flying saucer crash. That’s the general story but it is a moral tale about, alas, some aspects of the human condition. It’s about what happens when something already impossible to adequately explain is shut down as a result of gaslighting, outright lies and threats by an authority once trusted and held dear, and what that betrayal and the enforced compliance of silence does to individual and personal relationships. I am suddenly reminded of Ali’s line in the Fassbinder film, “Fear eats the soul.” It does.

As I write this, many people are waiting with bated breath for yet another report from the Pentagon about relatively recent sightings of these newly classified Unidentified Aerial Phenomena or UAPs. People want answers, the truth. Honestly, what truth could anyone possibly expect from the stuff of a government report? People are looking for truth from the military? Seriously?

Unfortunately, Eisenhower’s parting warning about the growing influence of the military-industrial complex was not heeded. It was probably too late anyway. Now, that the military-industrial complex is fully fledged even in the broadest popular context—that hard core military porn of the blockbuster, fear inducing, adrenalin pumping, awfully loud and expensive Marvel Universe Neo-mythology.

So, naturally, I guess it follows that many of the new crop of UFO enthusiasts would be excited about this potentially tantalizing reveal from the Pentagon. But I would be thoroughly surprised by any big reveal because I don’t think anyone there has an answer for or an understanding of the phenomena. I don’t know but that’s what I think.

That is not to say that I don’t think that the military has interfered, brutally, with particular related events and experiences, like Roswell for example, and that there are not reams of paper reports heavily laden with black redaction lines stacked away somewhere with other sad, historic artifacts lost to time. But, that’s not what’s in the pipeline today.

Whatever it is that people are experiencing and identifying as UFOs or UAPs is just as likely to be something slipping through time or another dimension or a parallel universe as it is to be visitors from off planet. The multitude of theories that people have about whatever is happening is astounding. Humans are really good at making shit up and they love to do it. And some people are honest and true. Most people are a combo plate.

Me? I have to go along with Carl Jung’s idea. Late in his life and career, Jung admitted that he risked his entire reputation by suggesting what I am about to clumsily summarize. I am by no means an expert on any of this but, in the context of my belief system and personal experience, Jung’s idea rings more true to me than anything else.

Jung’s idea is based on the Platonic Year, also known as the Great Year. Scientific astronomy defines the Great Year as "The period of one complete cycle of the equinoxes around the ecliptic, or about 25,800 years". Okay. So, there is an astrological overlay on the Great Year.

There are twelve astrological ages which correspond to the twelve astrological signs, and each astrological age, or Platonic month, lasts approximately 2,100 years. 2,100 years ago, approximately, marks the birth of Christ and the start of the Piscean age. Today, we are entering the age of Aquarius.

At the turn of each astrological age or Platonic month, Jung suggests, with historic examples going back at least to Ancient Egypt, that human consciousness shifts dramatically. With this shift in human consciousness, the archetypes and instincts of the collective unconscious shift. Because the consciousness of the individual exists in relation to the collective, when the consciousness shifts, going with the notion that thoughts become things (which they do), we essentially manifest a new reality. Nothing happens overnight. Endings and beginnings, like death and birth are messy, messy things.

Pisces, the fish, is a water sign. Jesus was a fisher of men.

Aquarius, interestingly enough, the water bearer, is an air sign.  Recently, man has learned to fly, landed on the moon, launched satellites, space probes, etcetera. Man, not a fish to be hooked but a being of the air, has become a given in human mythology over the past century.

Jung suggests that maybe, just maybe, these flying saucers, UFOs/UAPs, are a projection, a manifestation of human consciousness shifting into a new astrological age. It’s an idea. And, while suggesting this, he did make it clear, that he really did not know what these phenomena were.

When a remark he made in an interview was misinterpreted, he wrote a little book on the subject to clarify his thoughts on the matter. The book is Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies.

At the time of Christ, or the beginning of the astrological age of Pisces, there were many, many cults vying for enrollment. There was Mithraism, Gnoticism, Manichaeism, the Essenes and the Proselytes to name just a few of the incredible array of cults and belief systems milling about around the time of Christ.

As you can probably surmise, Christianity won out through a lethal combination of power plays, financial incentives, brutal violence, manipulation of archetypes, images, mythology and language.

Jung, of course, did not live long enough to experience the moment of time we are living witness to today. Jung, who lived between the mid-19th and 20th centuries, wrote his thoughts on the modern myth of Flying Saucers during the Cold War.

You would have to be living under a rock to not recognize the similarities of the last turn of a Platonic astrological month and today, when any other human being you notice walking down the same street as yourself might (and probably does) have an entirely different world view and perception of reality.

Finally, I must share my thoughts on this notion of intelligent life.

The idea that we are alone in the universe is pure nonsense. It is not logical. It’s a very big universe and we are but one rather puny species on one little planet and we have not been on this planet all that long.

The idea that we are the only intelligent life form in the universe is cray cray. However, considering that we blithely destroy all of our fellow intelligent life forms on the planet we share including the very planet that keeps us all alive, it does logically follow that this idea might hold credence in some human minds.

Personally, it goads me to no end that we dismiss the intelligence of our fellow species on Earth or force them to perform within the small confines of what constitutes human intelligence in our tiny minds to prove their own value and intelligence in relation to ours. And, with that in mind, that we spend the time and money that we do on searching for intelligent life off of the planet.

We are not so intelligent as we would like to believe. In fact, we only use a small fraction of our brains. Most of us ignore, are unaware of, or laugh at the possibility of all the other energetic systems of our rather magnificent human form. We are nowhere near living up to our potential. Definitely, I must, I am sorry to say, include myself in that category.

There is already plenty of alien life on the planet. or what some might construe as such. Just check in with Kenneth Nealson at USC. If you do, please tell him I say hi. Or you can read a Popular Science article about his work here.  If you don’t think Nealson’s alien-like life constitutes much, remember from whence the human species came.

Also remember that the world we experience is based on our perception.

What is your belief system? And how do you think you’ve arrived at yours?

Do you believe in UFOs?


©2021 Suzanne McDermott (All Rights Reserved)

Did you enjoy reading this? Has it given you food for thought or helped to expand your perspective? If you are able, please appreciate with a contribution here. Every little bit helps. Thanks!

This is the fourth in a five part series about the story, to date, of my song, The Roswell Incident.

Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 5.

Next week, I'll tell you my personal thoughts about The Roswell Incident and related matters of mindset, perception, and paradigm. Make sure you're subscribed in the sidebar.

Listen to The Roswell Incident on YouTube,  iTunes,  Spotify.

After the big premier year of The Roswell Incident, I managed to tour in one way or another for about another five years. With the exception of my Christmas tours, at every set, I gladly worked in the Roswell song.

At certain folk club gigs, there would often be a man, always a man, who'd come up with an energy ranging somewhere between outrage and outright hostility claiming, sometimes waving documents in hand, that The Roswell Incident was merely a weather balloon! or Look! It was Project Mogul! I have proof! I was like, in the most polite way, Buddy, calm down. I just sang a song.

There were the many, many people who asked what became of my father. My father? My father? No, listen, I would have to explain. The lyrics state: 12 years old. 1947. That would make me... 20 years older than I actually am. I definitely do not look that old but, if I keep touring, I might. Still, what a compliment to know that I'd composed words that seemed so true.

Anyway, those people. 

Of much more interest to me were the older men who'd had some sort of actual connection to the original time and place. I wish that I could remember all of the stories, and I might at some point but, for example, there was the man who came up to me after a tea time gig at a retirement home in Florida. He told me, almost wistfully, that when he was in the service, in early July of 1947, he was on a flight from March Air Field in Southern California, to somewhere east, and scheduled for a stop at Walker in Roswell. As his flight approached Walker for landing, they were instructed to bypass Roswell altogether, and to find an alternate spot to land and refuel. No explanation. Not an easy task but they did not land in Roswell.

I found these encounters particularly fascinating, because each man made it clear that I was the first person they had ever told whatever it was they shared with me about Roswell in early July, 1947.

In 1998, I recorded a new version of the song in South Carolina, and sent it over to Eindhoven, where Ankie Keultjes produced the new track as part of my Ephemera album, with the perfect support of the late, great Ad van Meurs, Eric van der Lest, and Tonnie Ector.

At some point, touring somewhere, I think, in Wisconsin, I split a bill with the lovely and talented Terry Farmer, who took it upon himself to learn this song and record it—always a grand compliment. Furthermore, my songs are difficult and Terry did a beautiful job. Of course. After all, he had worked as lead guitarist for the surf legends, Jan & Dean.

About five years later, I received a note from Roger Nygard who produced the Six Days in Roswell mockumentary. He asked to use my performance that his crew had filmed that hot afternoon in Roswell for the outro to his film.

For those of you not familiar with this business of song, my permission involved signing a boilerplate release contract with a standard $50 compensation. As the lingo goes in the songwriting world for co-writing and publishing deals, 50% is better than 0%, so $50 was better that $0. Anyway, Roger has a winning way and nothing ventured, nothing gained. Six Days in Roswell went out on a festival circuit that Roger had blazed and cultivated a few years earlier with his flick, Trekkies.  Time passed. 

A couple of years later, I heard from a Swedish producer who had seen Six Days in Roswell.  His office assistant told me that she'd watched him sit on his office rug replaying my performance at the end of the film over and over and over again. We shared a good chuckle. The producer asked to use the music for my song with Swedish lyrics and Leah Kunkel (thank you) drew up a pro bono permission contract for me.

After another year or so, a Swedish DJ reached out to let me know that the song in question, Min Pappa, had become a Scandinavian hit and the band that recorded it, Raymond & Maria, had won a Swedish Grammi. 

Other little sparks of light exploded around the song, year after year. At the very least, there's been the annual airplay in early July, somewhere or other on earth.

A few months ago, I received an email from the sweet and generous soul, The Crafsman, who asked to use my song for one of his delightful YouTube videos. Oh, the amazing people I've encountered because of this song.

Now The Roswell Incident is 25 years old. I wonder what might happen next.


©2021 Suzanne McDermott (All Rights Reserved)

Did you enjoy reading this? Has it given you food for thought or helped to expand your perspective? If you are able, please appreciate with a contribution here. Every little bit helps. Thanks!

This is the third in a five part series about the story, to date, of my song, The Roswell Incident.

Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 4, Part 5.

Next week, I'll tell you about a lifetime of experiences and ideas that primed me to write about Roswell. Make sure you're subscribed in the sidebar.

Listen to The Roswell Incident on YouTube,  iTunes,  Spotify.

I drove the long route from Albuquerque to Roswell, through white, blank stretches of earth, skirting the edges of the Trinity Site, then through the Lincoln National Park. There'd been lots of rain of late so the park was fragrant and sweet and soft and green. The last stretch east on scrubby, sandy 380 took me directly to my destination.

When I pulled into the Holiday Inn Express around 4:15 pm, it was 103 degrees. The marquee read "Aliens Crashed Here in 1947. Now it's your turn." I had my reservation but there wasn't a hotel room left in almost the entire state. 50,000 - 100,000 people were expected. 30,000 tent sites were set up.

Like any good extravaganza, the 1997, citywide celebration marking the 50th anniversary of the flying saucer crash outside of Roswell, New Mexico, was complex with many moving parts and players. Extreme Americana sewn up with odd and otherworldly seams made a Big Top worthy of a circus only Ray Bradbury might conjure.

In this case, the locals set up the Big Top, and the the circus rolled in, infiltrating every nook and cranny of what one local teen described to me as a nowhere town. Roswell, spelled backwards, is Llewsor. Loser! That teenage, cowtown humor unfolded after a short gig in a dark bar just before a patron, who had lost her way, fell through a dropped ceiling panel onto the pool table. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

My first gig was for Mayor Tom Jenning’s kickoff cocktail party at the Spring River Golf Course. The landscape glinted in the setting sun and my performance paled beside the, wow, powerful, majestic Mariachi Tenampa. I loved that early green and gold evening and those gracious, master musicians during what felt like the last, relaxing touch of familiar civilized life.

The overall event during the first week of July, was called ROWELL UFO ENCOUNTER ’97. The major producers were the City of Roswell, the Roswell Chamber of Commerce, the Roswell Convention and Visitors Bureau, and the Roswell Daily Record.

As with most circuses, there were big rings, some main events, and a multitude of side shows.

The two big rings were the UFO Conference, held in the Pearson Auditorium at the New Mexico Military Institute, and the UFO EXPO at the Roswell Convention & Civic Center. I bought half a table at the Expo for my CDs and slipped over to the Conference at every free opportunity.

Pretty much everyone who was anyone in the serious world of UFOs was at the Conference including Stanton Friedman, Bob Dean, Bud Hopkins, Whitley Strieber, John Mack, and Erich von Däniken. It was truly a star-studded cast.

As for the Expo, well, it was a mishmash of alien and flying saucer crafts, toys, books, food stuff, people with tales to tell and theories to promote, and of course, my little spread of CDs which did not exactly attract much attention. That being said, it turned out that there really wasn’t that much attention to attract.

It was like this. In the booth to my right, was a compact, sinewy man with a shock of white hair, aggressively thrusting out fliers while sounding off, “I am not of this world! Jesus said, ‘I am not of this world!” His partner was a lithe woman in a full black cat suit including a cap with little ears and black whiskers greased across her cheeks, gracefully pawing the air. My booth partner to the left was a level headed man selling I can’t remember what but something practical. We rolled our eyes at each other on more than several occasions.

The artist, Rod Skenadore, appeared, introduced himself, and pulled up a chair. He talked with me about Earth Changes, trees, his life as a Sun Dancer and Medicine Man. I played him my song, Golden Needles. He taught me a ceremony to perform with shreds of tobacco to connect us across miles and years.

There were puppet shows and magic acts. There were many, many, many people from the press. In fact, several of us determined that there were more media people than there were general attendees and figured that the media was responsible for booking most of the hotel rooms. Nowhere near the expected attendance was met.

More reps from the press than shoppers stopped by. The attendance shrank daily but the press hung in. A local NPR affiliate interviewed me for their Sunday night show. The attractive, young Steve Friedman, who wrote a GQ column called “The Single Guy”, interviewed me briefly and complimented me on my singing at the mayor's golf course reception. I complimented him on his complexion. Classic. The upstanding David Galloway interviewed me for what I think was an early iteration of the Houston Chronicle online and bought a copy of my CD to add to their website. To put what online then meant into context, the big tech at the Expo was an AOL live chat session throughout the week.

My favorite interview was with Brit journalist, Tony Barrell, who was writing an article for the Sunday Times Magazine, and having a no holds barred blast at the festivities. His enthusiasm was contagious. He bought a copy of Souvenir which, come to think of it, was my only full CD to date, and sent me the Times article when it was published. A total pro.

Ah, and then there was the roaming film crew shooting what was to become Six Days in Roswell, Roger Nygard’s mockumentary extraordinaire. Although I can’t say that they interviewed me, Rich Kronfeld did shove his mic in my face at one point asking the inevitable question, “Do you believe?!” I was speechless, (rare!), but managed to snap some cute shots of the crew in a comeback.

As for the side shows, they were everywhere. Alien heads were everywhere. All of the signage in town referred in some way, shape, or form to the flying saucer crash, including the signage at the New Mexico Military Institute. One of the Christian church marquees read, ”Aliens?  Maybe.  God?  Definitely!"

There was a UFO Cycling Classic, a 5K/10K Alien Chase, light shows and such at the Goddard Planetarium, a ribbon cutting for the new International UFO Museum and Research Center, and the Roswell Jaycees sponsored a time capsule burial at the William F. Brainerd Plaza. That plaza has since been removed and I can’t help but wonder what happened to the time capsule.

The costume contest was out of this world. Although the contest was not just for children, the children were adorable in their tiny, homemade imaginations. But then, the entire week was like walking through a costume parade. One day, on Main Street, I passed two zebra striped cloth centaurs with alien heads talking with an, I guess, normal teenager on the sidewalk. That sort of scene was around every corner.

Did I say it was hot? Some days hit 107º. The crowds shrank daily.

I’d booked as many gigs as I could come up with. Many of those were outside. I played at the aforementioned Coffee Bar, Peppers Grill and Bar (owned and operated by the fab Roe brothers). I played at some outdoor area set up by Parks and Rec, to several children hosing each other down on the lawn under the tent. The roaming film crew hung at the back, filming my performance. I’m pretty sure that I performed at a football field. More than once. I know that I played other places, but honestly, I can’t remember where. Except for the hangar.

I have the former mayor, Tom Jennings to thank for so many things including, probably, landing in Roswell at all, and certainly for many of my gigs. One of those gigs was on the 4th of July at the Roswell International Air Center.

The Roswell Daily Record, first to report the crash in 1947, sponsored the banquet in the hanger that allegedly stored the retrieved craft debris at what was then the Roswell Army Air Force Base. It wasn’t really the original hanger but close enough.

It was one hanger among many and they all looked the same to me and the entire center seemed deserted but someone finally flagged me down and guided me into the cavernous interior. It was totally cool but the sound was a mess and I couldn’t find anyone who knew the order of the evening’s programming.

An airplane hanger is not designed for musical acoustics. I couldn’t hear myself on the stage and no one could hear me. I worked out a program order with another scheduled musician, pulled the sound guy from the roaming film crew, and enlisted the GQ writer to be my ears at the back of the hanger. In the end, anyone who wanted to listen moved up to the edge of the stage and that was that. I did miss dinner but only because I wasn’t eating ostrich that year.

I suppose you could say that I opened for Whitley Strieber, because he took the mic when I was through. He began with comments about the noise in the hanger, ahem, and then proceeded to go on and on and on even as the weather changed and lightning flashed and thunder clapped. Well, then it rained like all get out. The hanger leaked. Huge puddles  formed on the floor and I helped the Encounter organizer, Stan Crosby lift wires off the floor. By the end of Strieber's talk, the hanger was effectively flooded and everyone ran for the door. Needless to say, no CD sales but the Mayor, once again, made up some difference in an appropriate, generous way.

Before leaving the hanger, I did meet an Indonesian yellow streaked bird of some sort who was perched on its man’s shoulder. Naturally, I had to meet the bird, Rodin. It’s man said that it bit strangers and gave me hard, fast rules of procedure before transferring Rodin to my right finger.  “Not near the face!”  In no time, Rodin had worked his way up my arm, onto my chest and was grabbing my lips and teeth and regurgitating onto my shoulder and neck.  The man's girlfriend was astounded. She said that it had taken months for the bird to be that intimate with her or the man's mother. Rodin then moved on to Streiber and proceeded to kiss him as well. It was all quite exciting.

Mayor Tom, his charming wife, Mia and I climbed into a 1942 Ford Jeep and drove through deep and muddy puddles to our cars. On my way back to the hotel, I navigated flooded streets while spotting glimmers of attempted fireworks.  

Other close encounters included a sit down with Stanton Friedman. I was able to thank him for his interviews with many of the 1947 witnesses and for helping me to write my song which, of course, he couldn’t have done without having interview Major Jesse Marcel and his son.

I can’t remember the hotel where many of us congregated and mingled but there, I was chatting up some fellow who was asking me about my song. I mentioned that I’d quoted Jesse Marcel, Jr.’s account and the man said, “Hey! He’s my cousin! He’s right over there. I’ll introduce you!” He did and I spent the next couple of hours palling around with Jesse, who was an MD in Helena, Montana, and Lance Strong Eagle Crawford who’d delivered a talk at the conference on Indian cultural beliefs in relation to Extraterrestrials. My kind of fun.

Later, Jesse asked me to grab my guitar and bring it up to his hotel room. I did and from the desk chair sang some of his own words back to him, his wife, Linda, and a couple of their kids all nestled together in the king size bed. It was a spine tingling, beautiful moment. Almost eerie. He loved the song. I loved singing it to him.

In the end, UFO Encounter ’97, turned out to be more of a love fest than a circus. The big rings and side shows felt more like campfires under big enchanted skies.

So what if I didn’t make back my expenses? Big deal that I toted home boxes of CDs. Actually, I am not at all so cavalier. Money is important. A little too important. But money is just a symbol and form of energetic exchange, and the energy in Roswell for that 50th anniversary was pretty darn special. Special because of all the good souls, interesting, funny, weird and wonderful people connecting all around town stirring up frissons of captivating energy.

That’s probably the sort of thing that’s been attracting other worldly beings.


©2021 Suzanne McDermott (All Rights Reserved)

Did you enjoy reading this? Has it given you food for thought or helped to expand your perspective? If you are able, please appreciate with a contribution here. Every little bit helps. Thanks!

This is the second in a five part series about the story, to date, of my song, The Roswell Incident.

Read Part 1, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.

Next week, I'll tell you about the song growing up through its first twenty-five years. Make sure you're subscribed in the sidebar.

Listen to The Roswell Incident on YouTube,  iTunes,  Spotify.

On one of the first dusty days of the 1996, Kerrville Folk Festival, I met a tall, blond, shirtless fellow under the blazing afternoon sun. He was hand-cranking his pop up camper in a spot with no trees in sight. I could not tell you who he was or what I was doing there but he told me that he lived in southern Nevada, near Area 51. As he was setting up his camp, we talked about UFOs and aliens and I was reminded of The Roswell Incident. Right there and then, I decided that The Roswell Incident was an American legend in need of a folk ballad treatment and that I was going to write that song.

Sometime later that week, while browsing through a used bookstore in town, I found and bought a first edition of Orfeo Angelucci's 1955, The Secrets of the Saucers. Definitely a sign.

Immediately after unpacking back in Boston, I set to work. And writing that song was quite a bit of work. The only book I could find that was directly related was a study by Charles Berlitz and William L. Moore that included excerpts from Stanton Friedman's interviews with prime witnesses. After reading that book and whatever else I could find, I was faced with a complex story and too much information mixed with too much conjecture. Meanwhile, the amusing but brutal Independence Day flick was ramping up for nationwide release.

I re-read the accounts of Mac Brazel’s daughter, Bessie, and Major Marcel’s son, Jesse. Brazel was the rancher who found debris strewn across one of his fields and Marcel was the military officer originally charged with collecting the debris. Both men chose to show their children pieces of what they'd found and both children had vivid recollections.

In a flash of inspiration, I combined the children and their two stories, not dissimilar, as a framing device. Once that was clear, I plucked excerpts from other eyewitness interviews to allow the song to tell the story as truthfully as possible through contemporary accounts. The lyrics fell into form while suggesting the tune on top of a simple chord progression.

After that, it was a matter of practicing and memorizing the thing so that I could perform it. I had an upcoming gig opening for Tony Bird at a small folk club west of Boston. Now, audience members rarely come to see the opening act and openers have limited time slots.

I can’t remember ever being so concerned about performing a new song but was very nervous about sharing a never before heard by anyone other than myself, six-and-a-half minute song about the crash of a flying saucer to an audience packed into a folk club for another artist. Nonetheless, I stood up and delivered the thing.

Much to my surprise, more than a few of the folks in the audience came up to thank me for the song and tell me that it had moved them. I am forever grateful for their encouragement.

Early in 1997, I was touring up the West Coast. In San Francisco, I stayed with a dear and generous friend who hosted a soirée for a few of our New College friends. By that time, I’d caught wind of some celebration planned in Roswell for the 50th anniversary of the crash and brought this up after sharing my song at dinner. Bill Latham seized charge of the the table with a brainstorm which went something like this: "Here’s what you do. Record the song and make a mini CD of the thing or an EP. Then send it to everyone you can think of in Roswell.”  I did exactly as Bill suggested. It was a great idea.

Back again in New England, I recorded the song, pressed the CD, hand signed at least 500 copies on a dining table in Tamworth, New Hampshire, looking out on Mount Chocorua, and sent it out with a pretty little press kit to everyone who was anyone in Roswell.

After receiving an invitation from Mayor Tom Jennings to perform at a private reception and the 50th anniversary banquet hosted by the Roswell Daily Record, I bought half a booth at the trade show, called every conceivable venue to book additional gigs, packed up my CDs, made air and hotel reservations and, yeah, there I went.

I flew out of Charleston, South Carolina, reading a copy of the current Time Magazine because the cover story (with the oddest rendition of a humanoid alien I have ever seen) was all about Roswell, and The New York Times issue with the story about the ridiculous Air Force media show, Roswell: Case Closed. Had there been any doubt in my mind that something unusual and important had happened in Roswell, half a century before, the  cartoonish Air Force disclaimer would have convinced me otherwise.


©2021 Suzanne McDermott (All Rights Reserved)

Did you enjoy reading this? Has it given you food for thought or helped to expand your perspective? If you are able, please appreciate with a contribution here. Every little bit helps. Thanks!

This is the first in a five part series about the story, to date, of my song, The Roswell Incident.

Next week, I'll tell you all about my experience during the 50th anniversary week in Roswell. Make sure you're subscribed in the sidebar.

Read Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.

Listen to The Roswell Incident on YouTube,  iTunes,  Spotify.