April 17. ISKCON 50 – S.Prabhupada Daily Meditations.
Satsvarupa dasa Goswami: Michael Grant.
One serious newcomer was Michael Grant. Mike was twenty-four. His father, who was Jewish, owned a record shop in Portland, Oregon where Mike grew up. After studying music at Portland’s Reed College and at San Francisco State, Mike, who played the piano and many other instruments, moved to New York City, along with his girlfriend, hoping to get into music professionally. But he quickly became disenchanted with the commercial music scene. Playing in nightclubs and pandering to commercial demands seemed particularly unappealing. In New York he joined a musicians’ union and worked as a musical arranger and as an agent for several local groups.
Mike lived on the Bowery in an A.I.R. loft on Grand Street. It was a large loft where musicians often congregated for jam sessions. But as he turned more and more to serious composing, he found himself retiring from the social side of the music scene. His interest ran more to the spiritual, quasi-spiritual and mystical books he had been reading. He had encountered several swamis, yogis, and Southside spiritualists in the City, and had taken up hatha yoga. From his first meeting with the Swami, Mike was interested and quite open – as he was with all religious persons. He thought that all genuinely religious people were good, although he did not care to identify with any particular group.
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