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I didn't stay scared for that long because I had this sense it was here to teach me something rather than take me. -Mark Karan on getting cancer |
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Photo by Susan J. Weiand
Open Karan's new CD and a striking photograph awaits you inside, where bowls and bricks of green weed sit alongside a peculiar assortment of objects.
"Some Indian clay pipes, a real Colt .45, I think it's probably codeine or something in that little bottle. It's a still life that Herbie Green shot in '69. My understanding of it was it was originally slated as the gatefold for a Santana record and Columbia [Records] said, 'Unh-uh! That's full of all this bad stuff. You can't use this!' And there it sat in his portfolio until he showed it to me and I said, 'One day I'll be finishing this mythical record. When I do can I use this picture?' It's called 'Spirit of '69,'" reveals Karan, long a pot-positive fellow who held several 4/20 celebrations at the dear departed Sweetwater in Mill Valley, CA. "I'm very pot-positive. I got a script through having cancer. As somebody who struggled with alcohol and cocaine issues, did the AA thing in the '80s, and spent 16 years completely clean and sober, after I'd been around the Dead community for a couple of years and saw all this beautiful bud my take on it was, 'Bud was never my problem. Alcohol and cocaine were my problem.' The problem with cocaine is it makes a new man out of you but he wants a line, too [laughs]. So, I started smoking pot around 2000, fully knowing I was an addictive personality but that if it became a problem I knew where to go for help. For me, I'm pretty happy on what some AA-ers call 'The Marijuana Maintenance Program.'"
Acceptance Is The Key
So, how is Karan feeling post-cancer now that he's back in the musical saddle?
 Mark Karan by Terry Rogers |
"Pretty fucking lucky! It sent a scare through me initially but I'm going to say something a little weird: I didn't stay scared for that long because I had this sense it was here to teach me something rather than take me," offer Karan. "That's how Maile and I approached the whole situation from the beginning. We did all sorts of alternative healing therapies and experiences in addition to the more traditional Western chemo and radiation stuff. I got pretty deep into some spiritual stuff and made it about growth. I made the physical growth into spiritual growth."
"One of the things I discovered early in the process was when I visited an acupuncturist and we walked into his office and there's a picture of he and Jerry on the wall. Turns out he was Jerry's acupuncturist that they even took him on tour with them sometimes," says Karan. "At my first appointment he says, 'In Chinese the word for crisis is the same word for opportunity.' And I just went, 'Whoa, that is powerful.' And that's kind of the place we looked at the whole cancer thing from. What's the whole opportunity in this? Where am I supposed to grow? What am I supposed to gain from this experience? If it's not here to stop this story how is it supposed to augment this story?"
"If I had to say one thing about where it did augment my story it's where I come from now. I have to remind myself that I had 53-years being the way I was pre-cancer but post-cancer I'm at the point where I feel what's really important in life is acceptance – the ability to see what is for what it is and move forward from there, not getting stuck in 'this isn't fair' or 'they should have done something different' or 'this isn't what was supposed to happen.' That's all fine but you can get stuck in there for an eternity," keenly observes Karan. "You don't have any choice. To go back to the AA thing, one of the big things they do is the Serenity Prayer. I was familiar with it and at least felt I knew what it meant. Boy, did I get a new perspective on it going through cancer! 'Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.' Well, I could not change the fact that I had cancer. There was not a fucking thing I could do to change that. I could do something moving forward to get rid of the cancer. So, it's 'grant me the serenity to accept the things I can't change' but then it's 'grant me the courage to change the things I can' as you're going into chemo and therapy and there's going to be pain and all sorts of inconvenience and vomiting. So, have the courage to go and do it. And then it's 'grant me the wisdom to tell the difference between the two,' so I'm not standing here beating my head against the wall trying to change something that isn't changeable. There's a sense of peace now."
 Mark Karan by Alan Hess |
"When I woke up from the surgery when they did my biopsy and the surgeon was standing at my bedside, he said, 'Mr. Karan, I'm sorry, I know you were really believing you were going to have a different result but I have to tell you that we did discover that you do, in fact, have cancer.' I was sure they were going to say the opposite. I was sure they were wrong and they'd take it out and it'd be fine. Well, it wasn't that, and my experience, interestingly, was that I was instantly transported to this elevated, calm space in myself, just kind of looking at the whole thing, thinking, 'Look at what's ahead of me now.' It was a very weird experience; I'd never reacted like that to anything in my life. There was no horror, no anger; there was some fear but I was outside of it somehow, I wasn't being run by it."
Today Mark Karan has completed his "mythic album" and Jemimah Puddleduck is on the road with a follow-up West Coast jaunt in September/October. He continues to be an active member of RatDog and seems if anything more ornery and energized than ever, which is saying something for a guy that's never lacked for spark or lusty engagement with the world. All of these forward motions, these longed for and now completed pathways, stems, at least in part, from his whole-hearted decision to live with renewed purpose as he faced down his cancer.
"I don't know what the future holds but I do know that I not only play music for a living, I am music. There isn't an opportunity for me to do something other than music because that's what I am. So, going forward I have no idea what the future holds. I assume RatDog will be around a good long time, but if someone had asked me in 2006 if I'd ever get cancer I'd have said, 'Hell no!' So, I don't know what's going to happen but I know I don't have a whole lot of time to waste on bullshit. I just want to play and live the best life I can and be the best person I can and have the best relationships with others that I can have. I guess I feel like we're put on this planet to grow and whatever path we take to get there is cool as long as that's our intention and destination."
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