Four years after his exodus from the psych ward Ash was a 29-year-old still desperately seeking  spiritual and mental solace.  Like the bands he was previously involved in, nothing substantial came to the surface.  Quixonic was replaced by A Mess of Uncles that was replaced Front Seat Burnhole, his strange choice in band names was surpassed only by the odd nature of his lyrics. There was a brief hint of success with his involvement in the band Team of Captains (TOC).  TOC was the initial birthing of USS’s sound, the rave rhythms were paired with scratching and Buchholz’s vocals/guitar.  Fans dug Buchholz’s mysterious messages laden in his lyrics and eventually an indie cult following was formed, but Ash still hadn’t discovered his balance yet and around 2005 the band fell apart.

Continuing his constant bender of drugs, and a thriving addiction for personal attention, Buchholz was on the same path as Kurt Cobain, one his most respected musicians. Drugs, doubt, and a lack of perspective drove Ash to a new level of confusion.  It was about this time that Ash disappeared from the music scene, an odd departure for someone who has been so heavily involved in music for his entire life.

“The experience wasn’t a weekend retreat that I could discuss at cocktail parties”, he now reminisces.

Ash arrived at the 140 acre Vipassana meditation center in northern Ontario late in July 2006.  The emerald leaves of the trees canopies reached high into the air, providing pockets of shade to escape the unrelenting July sun.  Silence, except that of that of the wind, is overbearing and it reinforces one of the rules for the center: no talking.  Along with the no talking, guests must not bring anything other than a toothbrush and loose fitting clothes, no books, music, or other stimulus, even eye contact is restricted.  The purpose of the center, to unravel all conditioned thought patterns that pertain to roles and self identity.

For 10 straight days, no words were spoken.  Buchholz meditated, ate, and slept in silence surrounded by  lawyers, doctors, and rock stars who came to this “Betty Ford clinic” for the spiritually confused.  What sounds like an easy task was far from it as the mind perpetually demands attention; however, Buchholz had prepared for this experience.   “For weeks before I read and studied the work of Freud in order to begin peeling back the layers of the onion.” He recounts,  “instead of arriving and facing a tsunami, I was able to downgrade it to a tidal wave”, and through the practice of silence and meditation, his mind eventually settled to an undertow, and eventually, mere ripples.