The Mysterious Rosary CD

A real-life head-scratcher story

Sedona, AZ, ca. 1997. I was visiting my friend D. who had moved a year earlier from Germany to the fairytale town of all things New Age. What struck me most about Sedona’s vibrant New Age community was that nobody had any money, but everyone seemed to be deliriously happy.

D. and her much older husband R. lived with two other people to share the rent: Y., a tall, long-haired musician with an adorable Scottish accent, and his girlfriend, T, a petite blonde with intense-blue eyes who exuded a “pretty nymph” vibe.

At the time, Sedona was chock-full of incredibly talented artists (I once saw Michelle Branch on stage at a local bar; 15 years old and just getting started as a singer). Y., whose father supposedly was the high priest of a band of Scottish druids, had his own band, and the music was just out of this world. Their song Traveling Minstrel perfectly described the vibe: ancient tales filled with fairies, goblins, and other nature spirits, passionate love, magic, pagan gods and goddesses.

I bought one of their limited-edition tapes and listened to it obsessively when I was back in Germany, where there was no magic and no fairies and where life seemed extremely bleak in comparison to colorful Sedona.

Less than two years later, I quit my lucrative career in advertising, sold everything I had, and set out to live in the town of my dreams. By then, R. was gone, and Y. and T. had moved on as well. I moved into their old room and, with D. as a roommate, started my new life as a poor but happy freebird. I brought the tape with me too.

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Fast-forward to ca. 2008.