Utopian Avenue
When I was seventeen, not long after I started to question life’s purpose, I wrote a song called “Utopian Avenue,” about a place where a road exists with people walking and talking.
Where everyone is kind,
Where there is no need for money,
Where there is no need for weapons,
Where there is no need for cold weather jackets,
Where there is no need for raincoats,
Where there is plenty of water.

Shortly after I ordained in 2001, the construction for The Pa-Auk Road began. Before that, it was just a dirt road. Besides the meditation hall which was finished a year earlier, it was more or less the first of the major construction projects in Pa-Auk.

The chorus would repeat, “Don’t you know… that I am going to… Utopian Avenue.”

That was maybe 1988 and I was just a kid back then, nor did I think such a place really existed in real life. However, when I would play the song, I would “go” there.
It was not really a great song, and was I not really any good either. In fact, I once had a girlfriend break up with me after I sang her my own songs while playing guitar.

However, anyone who writes music will tell you that the songs they write come from the heart, and sometimes they come from somewhere we are not really sure about.

Besides rainy season, I sort of got it right.

Photo of The Pa-Auk Road by Belgium Yogi Bram



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