What a long, strange trip it has been. The time has come to say fare thee well to the Grateful Dead x Vosges Collection.
If we are lucky, we have that one friend. They live their life by a soundtrack, their every experience is created with a mood to fit their vibe, and when you come into their space for a bite, a party or a chat, you enter their world of music and aesthetic. A chance meeting in the Vanderbilt “munchie mart” led me to that
friend. He was “random” ( I didn’t know to call that spiritual in the ‘90s,) laid back and Californian, his friends called him “Yeah Dave.” I was from Indiana and David was always showing and sharing a new world with me.
David exposed me to experiences that would shape the course of my education and my life. He led me to a community that was bigger than the day-to-day, to a place where the music was magic; feeling it connected me to a universal source where I saw my essence of self more clearly. That’s when I learned about Grateful Dead and I took the flight. A Dead show held a space for feeling, open-heartedness, flow, and freedom. In a word, it was DIVINE. The music was healing and while I knew that the path ahead of me was for my steps alone, those nights under skies of diamonds, filled with the astral jams of “space”, were illuminating, transcendent, and gave me a euphoric feeling of freedom and possibility. It was a profound gathering, a collective. It was love. It
was human.
It was also at these shows that my years-long fascination with collecting pebbles and stones began to take on new meaning. Crystals found their way into the hands of many people in this otherworld. They were of the earth, each holding a vibration passed from caretaker to caretaker. Just like the music, they held mystical powers of healing. I’ve kept that knowledge close.
As I have traveled the world bringing stories to life through the medium of chocolate, I have continued to study their therapeutic nature. I have released crystals to others when they would serve them better than me and allowed others to come to me while my belief in their power has grown. Since the beginning of my company, I have tried to marry the chocolate I make with the spiritual consciousness for which I strive. David’s work took a similar path as he experimented with yoga and music as a medium for finding devotional presence. We combined forces, including chocolate in his students’ yoga practice, and found that the taste of chocolate prior to a session tasted completely different than after. The participant, present in the space and their bodies, was able to discern all of the nuances of the chocolate when before quieting the mind’s chatter, one could not. As an extension of this work, this collection has been infused, quite literally, with the healing energy of the stones.
We have paired each of the truffles with crystals to alchemically align and open each of the seven chakras through a tasting and healing experience. The epic trips of my life have been filled with soundtracks of my own making. Many of the songs and lessons come from the Grateful Dead, the iconic storytellers to who I dedicate this collection, and from David, who showed me that music and friendship fill my heart with the gold of sunshine and fill my cup so full.
Peace, Love & Chocolate,
Katrina Markoff
