"Meher Baba used us all like puppets on a string..."
Following below, is the story of the roundabout way that a Lyn Ott painting of Avatar Meher Baba arrived at Meher Mount. Lyn Ott (1926-1998) was an American painter and follower of Avatar Meher Baba. He was born with retinitis pigmentosa, a hereditary degenerative eye disease that leads almost inevitably to blindness. Regardless, he pursued life as a painter ultimately creating many beautiful depictions of Meher Baba.
In 1964, Lyn and his wife, Phyllis Ott, who is also an artist, met Meher Baba. After this meeting, Lyn painted Meher Baba almost exclusively. Most of the Otts’ work is owned by individual collectors. And, a series of murals portraying Meher Baba’s life by Lyn and Phyllis Ott are in the Meher Pilgrim Center in Meherabad, India, near Meher Baba’s Tomb Shrine.
ARTIST LYN OTT at Myrtle Beach, SC, in 1996. surrounded by several of his paintings of Avatar Meher Baba.
What follows is the story of how one of Lyn Ott’s paintings came to Meher Mount. The story is told by Jim Whitson, a member of Meher Mount’s Board of Directors since 2005 and a long-time visitor and supporter of Meher Mount. The year was 2007.
By Jim Whitson
At the time, 2007, I was in a musical group which played Arabic/Spanish/Gypsy fusion music. I was invited to join the group by Bruce*, an artist/musician who formerly lived in Santa Barbara, CA, [where I now live] and had moved to Los Angeles. Bruce played an instrument that was basically a Persian viola and had been in the UCSB Middle Eastern Ensemble for years before he moved.
I was asked to join as a singer/guitar player. And here is another twist. After I joined the group, Bruce met a woman named Karla, who taught music at the Pasadena Conservatory of Music. Karla was a talented singer and a highly trained musician, but she was also a bit of a diva.
After a brief honeymoon period with the group, she did not want to share the singing spotlight with me because she wanted to be the only star of the show. So, she talked Bruce into firing me (Bruce had a crush on her). They did fire me, and whom did they replace me with? None other than Morrie, a fellow follower of Meher Baba living in Southern California. He now teaches at the Pasadena Conservatory of Music.
What happened to the musical group? They split up a couple of months later due to personality conflicts. Surprise, surprise...
Well, the world gets even smaller.
Bruce had a brief relationship with a Persian woman. Once, when I was in Los Angeles for a rehearsal, Bruce invited me to a Persian celebration that his girlfriend was going to. He asked me to come along because she had a sister. I went and met the sister. We hit it off, and Alice and we started seeing each other whenever I was in Los Angeles.
AVATAR MEHER BABA painted by Lyn Ott (1926-1998) and acquired by Meher Mount in 2007. (Photo: Ellen Kwiatkowski)
She was kind of an old-fashioned hippie girl, but from the younger generation. One time when I was visiting Alice at her flat in Venice, I told her about Meher Baba.
She said, "Oh, I used to have a friend, named Sean, who told me about Meher Baba. Every full moon when I lived in Hawaii, we (all the hippies in the area) would get together in the forest and dance all night."
I said, "Your friend Sean’s last name wasn't L was it?" She said, "Yes, do you know him?" I said, "Yes, I know him well and I dated his ex-wife for two years." She said, "I have to call him to ask him to send me some items I left in Hawaii, and I will tell him I met you."
So, Alice called Sean in Hawaii and in their conversation, Sean, who was very low on money at that time, told Alice to ask me if I wanted to buy a Lyn Ott painting. Apparently Sean had this painting in storage somewhere in Los Angeles. He named a price.
Alice called me and asked me if I wanted to buy the painting (she got a percentage of the action). Then I called Sam Ervin, and we pooled our resources to get the purchase price. I went down to Venice, to Alice's place, paid her the money and brought the painting to Meher Mount.
My relationship with Alice did not last very long. And after all that happened, I have never seen any of these people again.
So, Meher Baba used us all like puppets on a string to get this painting to Meher Mount.
Note
*The names have been changed to protect the privacy of those involved.
Source
*Meher Baba quote from Lord Meher: The Biography of the Avatar of the Age Meher Baba, Online Edition, by Bhau Kalchuri, page 1631, accessed April 20, 2020. (c) Avatar Meher Baba Perpetual Public Charitable Trust.