Sharrhan Williamson

Note: I’ve changed my first name from Beverly to Sharrhan - it was a ‘70s musical flower child thing that stuck and still works for me. ;-p )

I remember being painfully shy in high school, perhaps with the exception of band and orchestra, largely due to a high frequency hearing loss (I was always saying “What? What?”). I’ve lived in the Boston area for over 25 years (love it), and performing in contemporary music groups, solo and ensemble, has dissolved any inhibitions I had and made me into a much more assertive and shall we say colorful character (and somehow the hearing problem has faded into insignificance, as well).

Career-wise, I’ve been playing music and recording. You can listen to my music here: www.soundclick.com/sharrhan. Click on ‘music’ on the right-hand side of the page and you’ll be taken to seven free full-length MP3s of my original music. Also, I’m a visual artist and I make all my own jewelry. Also, I work for the Cambridge Arts Council as a street performance sound monitor. In past years I’ve also done a lot of word processing, editing and transcription, but my heart and soul are in music and the arts. 

Jonathan (whom I met on the first day of spring in 1988!) and I are bona fide ‘health nuts’ who work out at the gym every day and eat lots of raw food. For the past 13-14 years we’ve spent a good part of every summer enjoying long (12+day) camping trips on nearby islands, and we’re also both committed to a socially engaged spiritual path-- always striving to walk that fine line between awareness of the suffering and oppression that exist in the world (more than ever now with the explosion of corporate fascism worldwide) and still retaining the ability to feel incredible love, joy, and gratitude.

Message to the class: Ah, yes, I think I have one! Simplify, simplify, simplify ... and life is alot more fun! That’s what’s been working lately for me, anyway. And I’m finding that satisfaction comes not so much from personal successes (ultimately the quest to "be enough" never ends) as from the opportunities I find to look outside and beyond myself in embracing some cause larger than my own.

sharrhan@verizon.net