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What I’m Hearing in My Head tells the story of a San Francisco iconoclast who has developed a unique method to teach music, taken on a comic book character’s name, and now struggles to survive in a changed city.
In the late 1960’s, San Francisco attracted wanderers from across the country, seeking refuge in a city that allowed its residents the freedom to express diverse political and social points of view and the opportunity to create new paradigms of communal life and work. Many well known personalities and artistic/cultural experiments from this time have shaped the collective memories of the 60’s for many of us. This film tells the story of one of the less well known individuals who settled in San Francisco , established creative outlets with like minded individuals, and whose identity is inseparable from the 40 years he has spent in the Haight Ashbury neighborhood. He is still an echo of that time, as he says, and his name, Mr. Natural, is destined for history, adopted for his striking resemblance to the self-acclaimed guru created by comic artist Robert Crumb. Mr. Natural treats his identity with due respect, professing, “I try to do my best to be true to the character and not get into any trouble.”
Mr. Natural settled in San Francisco in 1968, dividing his time between establishing the San Francisco Free Theater, working as a technical draftsman and electronics engineer, and playing music in the Haight – as he describes it – as a true renaissance man. As time wore on and he found a need to focus on one arena to survive the changing times, he established Mr. Natural’s Music School in the early 90’s, to teach music through a unique method he developed, using music theory as the entry point in teaching his students to play – and as importantly, compose music. Critics claim that he is ‘breaking tradition’ and trying to ‘recreate the wheel,’ while students are inspired by new found abilities to grasp music theory and composition. In the midst of these debates, investment in the art continues to diminish, and students are hard to find. “We come from a time when you had to perform with complete concentration for 2½ hours, now everyone wants a music lesson in 128 characters or less.” Mr. Natural and his partner Angel now find themselves searching for ways to cope with the realities of modern day San Francisco. They have been unable to patent their innovations or retain sufficient students, but they continue to pursue imaginative approaches to share their passion. This film is about the journey of an individual expressing his creativity in San Francisco from the 1960’s to today and about the multiple identities that shape our lives as we struggle to survive.
