Echo Living

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Have you heard about echo living?  You’ve come to the right place, because I just composed the idea! …

Anyone can afford it – it only costs a song …

Echo Living is a musician’s take on eco-living;  you just transform your lifestyle, grooving in an echo of the past. ‘Scaling down’ we musos call it – living the simple life.  Most musos are very good at it and have been echo-living out of necessity for years. Rampant consumerists, noting the typical musician’s simple lifestyle, labeled it ‘down & out’.  But the latest is that it’s definitely ‘up & in’.  Enjoy the benefits …

1. Your Life is Less Complicated
A simple lifestyle is less complicated: it’s as simple as that!

2. No Clutter
Echoing a simple lifestyle of days gone by, re-cycle all your clutter. It’s amazing how many possessions you don’t need!

To discover what you don’t need, take an extended vacation in a small cabin or caravan; no lounge, dining room, family room, computer room, bedrooms, guest rooms, bathrooms, kitchen, en-suites, dressing rooms, games rooms or any other rooms, and the clutter in them. You realise that, apart from what you need for work,  the possessions you left at home are superfluous, and your big house was a time-consuming slave-driver. So, with a huge smile, you de-clutter, sell up and move into a smaller place – to hell with the Joneses!

3. You’ve More Time to Relax
Not needing to mow lawns, care for furniture, ornaments and kitchen gadgets,  wardrobes full of clothes & shoes, not needing to sort the games room, vacuum floor upon floor and generally maintain a large building, you  discover how to relax. Now you thrive in the blissful absence of television, having found life is much more relaxing without it.

You find there’s a sunset to look at and a real you. You’re learning to play a musical instrument – and by now you realise that doing nothing is absolute bliss. When you go on holiday you no longer have to keep up appearances at the best hotels – you’re far more content at the backpackers or couch surfing. And … your love-life is reborn!

4. You Enjoy More Peace & Quiet
Living in a quieter place, there is no traffic roar, no neighbours too close by having loud ‘domestics,’ or winding up the volume on music you hate. You chill out listening to birdsong and making your own music.

Your house-sale profits went into fantastically effective insulation & double glazing for your cabin so it’s real quiet – and coping well with the onslaught of unpredictable global-warming weather extremes. Insect screens mean noisy bugs are not trapped indoors,  and you have peace of mind not killing them. Barking dogs? You’re almost ready to get rid of them too – since the best thing you can do to slow global warming, according to New Scientist, is to go vegan. Better still, Wholefood Plant-Based style vegan – ultra healthy, real food. Who needs highly processed alt-meats and Lab foods when beans, tofu, chickpeas & lentils are cheaper and healthier?

5. Happy Healthy Meals
Cooking is a melody with your whistling kettle and your two-plate hob. No oven, no microwave, no food processor, cake mixer … You’re shedding extra pounds not doing any baking – who needs cakes anyway? -no complicated meals are expected. No one imagines a dinner party in such a situation. Everyone’s happy with soup, steamed veges, salad, fruit, and bug-marked organic produce from your garden.  With no pantry, the essential grains, nuts & seeds, canned food and a few treats are all accessible on a shelf. Echoing the healthiest civilisations, you stand a chance of surviving on grass ‘n weeds soup if things turn sour. Meanwhile the delicious vege recipes you prepare are amazing!

6. You’re Fitter, Stronger & Slimmer!
As you’re secluded from the road, it’s a bit of a hike up to your place.  You’re walking much more, weight-lifting supplies and musical instruments up to the cabin, toning every muscle group as you tread, goat-footed, across uneven, un-concreted land. Your arms strengthen as you stretch up to attend to the trees, or dig the ground to plant new ones. You’ve plenty of time for recreational walking at last. There’s room for your yoga mat and a few dumbells, but not for the plethora of exercise machines you didn’t use before – you make better progress doing a simple floor routine to music anyway. You swim in real places like the ocean and the local swimming hole, and jump on your bike. Everyone says how fit and slim you look, and of course you’re just lapping that up.

7. You Have More Time in Nature
You’re smelling the roses now and Mother Nature is pleased you no longer have five hundred bottles of lotions & creams. Echoing your grandmother’s lifestyle, you’ve only three or four essentials;  good old fashioned soap, a little patchouli oil as a deodorant, your favourite oil for your hands & skin, and a simple first-aid kit …  (though some of us can still indulge in shampoo & mascara).

You’ve discovered you’re actually part of nature, a wonderful symphony, in which you play a part – now you’re not polluting the environment. You run round naked in the air occasionally, upping your dose of vitamin D after your solar shower.  No more SAD syndrome – you’re living in the light!

8.  … and More Meaningful Friendships
Since it takes a bit of dedication to hike up to your bolt-hole, people only visit if they really want to enjoy your company. No salesmen, market researchers, politicians, or religious proselytizers knock at your door.  Fund-raisers don’t even know you’re there, and you’re delighted to bask in uninterrupted peace every Halloween.

When friends, family, musos and invited guests do visit, everyone loves the atmosphere. The mood of the place has a calming effect, knocking small-talk on the head. With no screens in the background, nothing distracts you from being genuinely human, fully present and aware. You’re even content with  a bit of silence, not feeling obliged to fill every musical rest with awkward chatter.  Since silence is so refreshing, energy builds for a sing-song, ditty recital, or a good old-fashioned board game. No one is bored as you echo the delightfully sane socilaising of your grand-parents’ era.  Everyone toasts your health & happiness; with so much to go around, you take a good dose and retire feeling loved and truly blessed.

9. You’ve More Disposable Income
Since you’re echoing the simple life, you now have more disposable income. The disposable-ness itself has not increased – that’s what everyone else is doing; disposable this and disposable that. No. You’ve got extra income to dispose of. At last you can help your kids into their own ‘little greenie’ echo-home.

10. Your Global Footprint just got Radically Smaller
You do this fun Ecological Footprint Quiz – as it’s simple to sign up with the site and take part.  Now vegan, writing songs and living in a tiny space, you’re able to sing about your results. But you still have an un-harmonious element: what you gleaned from the quiz makes you realise you can do better. You decide your footprint is going to grow even smaller which means your Echo will be even louder!

11. You’re Happy & Satisfied
Having time and space is amazing; you even keep an even beat on the drums! You discover a new feeling – happiness! Without the crazy rhythms of ‘civilisation’ tearing around your brain,  you can afford to not think. Not thinking is divine, and you sink, with a sigh of relief, into an ever-nourishing well of satisfaction.  It’s quite good discovering this, your own water-table, as water-tables are going to be a major problem for many over-civilised nations as global warming sets in. Your little well is a great place for echoes too, as you fill in time listening to the crystal tones of your dulcet voice – after all, you’re becoming a pretty classy singer!

12. Wow! More Time to Listen to Music
Not only are you singing and playing an instrument now, you’re also spending many warm evenings listening to music;  I mean really listening – you can actually hear in ways you previously thought impossible. You must be enlightened – echoing the ways and wisdoms of the saints and sages in ancient times (they actually heard music too, without a stereo). Like them you are now entering the celestial realms, ‘receiving’ higher transmissions in Keith Jarrent’s Vienna Concert and your favourite Joni Mitchell albums. You realise  echo-living has brought you to this, the apex of human existence. Your heart bursts out! All the rest of your disposable income goes into funding the latest Magic & Mischief album.  Definitely you’ve got good karma now!

13. Ahhh … Better Sleep
As your music player fades the last tracks of your chosen night-music into the ether, you drift into slumber … smiles echoing through your dreams.

Free from the nasty talons of desire for material goods, your mind can now have a good Zzzzz. You don’t need pills, a fancy mattress, or an expensive hypnotherapy programme. In your little cabin among the trees, you sleep like a log because you haven’t over-eaten, you have exercised, and you now have peace of mind.  Refreshed and energised, you wake with the rising sun, singing, ‘The hills are alive with the sound of music” …

You’re at peace with your destiny. And should you discover you’ve a life-threatening condition, you contentedly accept nature’s way, like grandma did, graciously ‘going to sleep’, easing into the daisies …  Your full, satisfying life is one your family and friends are inspired to echo. Your little echoes bounce around with other echoes, and music brings harmony to the world. The End 🙂

Post Script
Baby Boomer Girl lived in a one-room hut off the grid when she wrote this. Life is still  wonderful in her new Echo-home between the Tararua mountains and the ocean, on the food-basket plains of the Horowhenua.