Saturday, June 17, 2017

Supporting the Artist


This is a rare direst communication and ask to my followers on this blog, rather than the usual essays or poems or photos. I rarely speak to you directly, except in comments, so this is a bit new to me, too.

I have started a Patreon site, which is intended to help me make a living as a creative artist.

Below, I will post the text of a long email, with updates, that I have sent out to family and friends. I have a favor to ask, which is detailed in the email, but which I will summarize briefly, first.

Basically, going forward it looks as if my best recourse in life is to pursue my arts career full-time, in which case I need patronage and support. Now that I am disabled, it's hard for me to do anything else, like hold down a regular job, but I do need to earn some level of income, and the best way to do that is to ask for help, and in return make everything I do creatively available to my patrons. They see what I am doing first, and they get first crack at what I have created, be in photographs, music, a new typeface (I have made three in the past year!), and so on.

The favor I want to ask is in two parts:

1. Please visit my Patreon site, read the introductory text I wrote about all this, or watch the video I made to introduce myself. If you would like to support me as an artist, in whatever small capacity, please do. No amount is too small, and every bit helps enormously.

Link to my Patreon site:

2. Please pass on the news to your own friends and email contacts, especially those you think might be interested. To do that, you can cut and paste the email text below into your own email, and send it off. Or if you just wish to pass along the Patreon site and other links, please do that.

Thank you!

I am in the process of moving my creative activities, including the kinds of posts I have done on this blog for the past several years, onto my Patreon site, and making it into my new blog. I post a Public post at least once a week, which the whole world can see. The rest of my posts are for patrons only. But my lowest threshold of support is only US $2, so if you really want to keep following me, there's a very inexpensive way to do it.

Thank you again. Sincerely Yours,


Email text is below.

Here are the links, also in the email below, relevant to this occasion. More will be added later.

Link to my Patreon site:

Link to my Redbubble online store:

Link to the GoFundMe set up to help me replace the gear stolen from my van in Palm Springs, last March:

Dear Family, Friends, and Supporters—

I am contacting many of you on my email list with an update and some important arts-career-related news. Later on, I am going to ask a favor.

First, an update:

I am for this summer living in the Ann Arbor, MI, area, for now, where I will have a roof over my head, and thus can get a lot of work done in a settled place—I can set up my recording studio and work on the two albums of music I have been thinking about for awhile; I can paint; I can write; I have a base from which to roam, go camping, do road trips, and bring back more new photos and ideas to work on.

Ann Arbor, MI, many of you know, is the closest thing to a home town that this nomad has. It's a little strange being back in Michigan, this summer—much remains the same, much has changed. I will be based here in Michigan for the summer, during which time I will be doing some camping excursions, a music seminar in July at Interlochen Arts Academy in northern Michigan, and more. I will also be driving to Wisconsin periodically, to continue to sort through what I have left in my storage lockers there. As for where I will be past this summer, I haven't planned that far ahead. I have options, including heading back to the Southwest and California for the winter. All that will depend on where I find a place to stay.

This past winter I spent mostly in New Mexico and California. I was very happy to stay with my bestie Becca and her Mr. Man in Paso Robles, CA. Because, you know, wine country! After that, I was in Palm Springs for several months; or rather, in and around PS, as I never found an actual place to live. Some things happened that were wonderful, like having an opportunity to sing with Modern Men, the Coachella Valley Men's Chorus, which led to a very fun concert experience singing choral jazz arrangements from the American Songbook. I made many new friends, and renewed some existing friendships in the LGBT chorus movement. I knew that the Palm Springs area was a retirement community; I did not know that it was such a huge gay chorus retirement community!

Some less-than-great things happened during my stay in Palm Springs, too, all of which I survived, learned from, and which I have now moved past. My van was broken into, and music gear and my cameras were stolen. I am currently raising funds to replace my stolen microphones, while some friends and donors have already helped me replace the cameras and other gear. (I include links to my GoFundMe campaign and my other online arts activities below.)

I learned how to live fairly comfortably in a tent and a van. My friend Al helped build me a solar power rig, which is portable and which I can use to power my laptops and mobile devices wherever I am camped; it works very well, and allows me to do my creative work well into the evening, even while living far off the grid. I now have a Disabled Access pass for the National Parks, which means I get into the National Parks free for the rest of my life, and also gives me a 50 percent discount for camping. I also now have the same sort of access card for the California State Parks, which discounts 50 percent off all fees.

All of that is going to be VERY useful. Traveling and camping out West becomes a LOT cheaper. I feel at home in the National Parks; they are a huge source of inspiration to me, and also a place where I feel at home, and alive, and safe. I am probably meant to remain semi-nomadic, at this time of my life, so I hope to travel safely for as long as health permits. The "snowbird" pattern of spending winters in warmer climes appeals to me.

During my time in the Palm Springs area, I learned that asking for help leads to help being given, in large ways and in small. People stepped forward to help me after the van was broken into; others in Modern Men helped me enormously with attire for the concerts; still others found music-recording gigs for which I earned a little money. Being my Mother's son, asking for help, when you need it, is kind of a new concept for me; but I am getting a lot of practice. I am no longer ashamed to ask for what I need, and no longer afraid of getting a "No" in response. All you an do is ask; people help you if they can; even if they can't help you in tangible ways, the moral support is also wonderful.

To that end, I have created a Patreon artistic patronage website.

Patreon is a patronage paradigm: people support creative artists whose work they like directly, via donation, rather than going through a record company or a publisher as distributors. All kinds of creative work appears on Patreon, from music to comic books to the genuinely unclassifiable. I support a few artists myself, in my own small way, including Amanda Palmer, whose TED talk and book "The Art of Asking" inspired me to do this, along with some friends who recommended Patreon to me directly. makes it easier for artists to connect with their audience, no matter how specific or tiny their niche is. I currently have a dozen patrons who directly support my art-making. Part of the agreement between artists and patrons is that patrons get first access to the work I am doing, and special treats that no one else gets. That is described in more detail on my Patreon page.

So here is the favor I want to ask, in two parts:

1. Please visit my Patreon site, and look it over. There is an introductory video I made that introduces the concept, and gives some of the background; there is also a text description. (I filmed the video at one of my favorite locations for photography in Joshua Tree National Park.) Please consider becoming a patron of mine, for as little as $2 per month, or for whatever higher value you think the work is worth. I assure you, every bit goes a very long way.

You can look my Patreon site over at this URL address:

2. Please pass this email along to your own email circle of friends, especially those you believe might be interested in supporting the arts, so that they too can look it over. Please help me spread the word! I would be very grateful.

The good people at Patreon say again and again that the way this works is to spread the news far and wide, and see what happens. I just need a few more people to be fans—fans of the art I make, and the music, and video work, and type design, and all the various art forms I practice, many of which have already started to earn me some income. I have several friends around the world, who are musicians and artists, who are somehow making it work, via means similar to Patreon, and via their constant presence online. You have to let people know what you are doing—so I am! Even if you can't support me as an artist, please do support me in passing the word along about what I am doing.

That's it. That's all I am asking for.

This is my best shot at rebuilding my life, after long illness and recovery, and several years that were hard to get through. And here I am, still going. I am doing better, I am feeling better, I have restarted my life after that long illness, and I feel positive about it. My mind can still get fogged over by lingering after-effects of the chronic illness I survived; yet even on my worst days, I make art. It's what I do.

I anticipate that, going forward, making art will be more and more what I do. It's what I am best at doing. Perhaps it was what I was meant to do all along, and in some ways it's the only thing I am very good at doing. It is as fundamental to my being as breathing.

So, if you are able to help me, in any way, to continue to do my creative work, and to grow and evolve as an artist and human being, please do.

Thank you reading this very long email.

Thank you for being my friends, and fans, and supporters. (I know that for some of you this update is not fresh news, as you are already my Patreon supporters. Thank you for your additional patience.)

Thank you for being my family, both family of origin and family of choice, in every way that matters.

Thank you to each and every one of you who has helped me get through the past few years, to finally emerge on the other side, and start over, and build a new life as a professional creative artist. Thank you!

Please look over my Patreon site, and let me know what you think. And please pass it on. I am also researching means to sell my original photography and visual art online, and also my original typeface designs. I hope to have more news about that soon.

Thank you very sincerely, and with much love and gratitude—

Arthur Durkee


Link to my Patreon site:

Link to my Redbubble online store:<>BR>

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Tuesday, May 23, 2017

Struggle to Find Hope

a Spiral Dance essay

I slept well, but woke up early. Perhaps, as a result, or perhaps not, I am feeling rather cynical this morning. Remember that cynics are actually disappointed idealists.

I am disappointed in you, humanity. I am disappointed in so many of you individually, as well. You could do so much better, and yet you so often flinch away from the effort, settling instead into your little living hells, comfortable because they are familiar. Comfortable with suffering because enlightenment is just too much work.

I am not going to go into a rant that even I will find predictable, against the usual suspects, hatred, fear, murder, pain, suffering, doubt. I won't go into that rant because it won't make any difference. No one listens to such rants anymore, because the horrors have become normalized, and even those who would agree with you are eager to scroll on as quickly as possible.

I am not a believer in either the defeatist "biology is destiny" camp or the pseudo-Darwinian "humanity is inherently violent" camp; yet on days when I wake up feeling cynical, I can't really generate a coherent argument against the social and political consequences of entropy. But that's why I am disappointed in you, humanity, and you, people who choose to embrace entropy rather than defy it. You give in way too easily.

You disappoint me, humanity, because of your constant cowardly reluctance to look the abyss in the eye, and spit at it. Fuck nihilism. Nihilism is just another ideology, just another -ism, that looks at only part of the picture and thinks it's the whole. I cannot name a single -ism that does not make that mistake. You disappoint me, humanity, with your constant tendency to look at only one part of the elephant and think it's the whole elephant.

You disappoint me, humanity, because you constantly think too small, too provincial, and in the end too narcissistically. You are still primates, humanity, in that you embody the preconscious tension between group/mob psychology and the necessary urge to evolve, and all too often default back towards your personal comfort zone and simplistic easy answers to life's challenges.

You disappoint me, humanity, because you so often miss the whole point of what it means to be human: Biology isn't destiny, although it's the starting gate. We are given the gift of consciousness, which allows us to override and rewrite our biological programming. We are not locked into anything, we merely believe that we are. The elephant is much bigger than we think it is. Our potential is precisely as large as our imagination. We have the power to shape reality, and we usually fail to do so because we choose to be so small. Biology and biography are not destiny because we can overcome them. We can change our destiny because we believe we can. To do so, we have to defy the downward slide that is entropy, and walk uphill. Suffering is easier than enlightenment, because suffering slides downhill, while enlightenment means claiming the mountain in the worst weather, when you're already tired.

The mark of suffering that most individuals who work for and towards the light bear is sheer, constant exhaustion. It's an uphill battle, necessary and worthwhile and rewarding, yet the hardest work you will ever do. (Until you reach that point where you let go; then it becomes the easiest.) It can kill you. It can make you cynical. I am tired all the time, humanity, and it's directly caused by the majority of you refusing to take up your share of the load of the work that needs doing to make the world a finer place. I understand the anger of some social activists; it comes from exhaustion, frustration, and those days when it feels like no one actually wants to grow up.

Cynics are frustrated as well as disappointed idealists. We all have our days when it's too hard, there's too much to do, and the news reports how once again we have failed to grow up as a species.

Warfare has been continuous for more than a century now, because it's been made too easy. The technological advances since the Industrial Revolution have brought many benefits and changes to our modern world, but it has also made it easier to kill people in large numbers. Before the Industrial Revolution, war was always limited in scope; it is no longer. Terrorism is a word for warfare on a social scale, a different kind of battlefield. Extremists who use terror are always smaller in number than armies; but they are feared because their commitment is total, fanatical, nihilistic. Fuck nihilism again. The proper response to terror is to laugh at it, just as the proper response to the abyss of fear is to give it the finger, in fierce and laughing defiance. Fuck terrorism. You can't live in fear.

There are words I struggle with, when I am feeling disappointed in you, humanity, but the struggle is when it matters most:

Hope. Love. Faith.

Those are words that it is very easy to misuse, and when misused they turn toxic, deadly, violent to the spirit, even more than wounds to the flesh. So I always use them with vast caution. No one knows better than a bard or a wizard how easily the power of words can turn dark. Use them with caution.

Cynicism and disappointment are only fatal if you let them be. If you stop exploring the rest of the elephant, and give up, and stay in your cave. I am very disappointed in you this morning, humanity, but I haven't given up on you. You really need to grow up, and quickly. Take your hands off the stove, children, before they scar over and you can no longer feel the rest of the elephant. I'm not going to tell you what's on the other side of the door, you won't hear it, you won't listen. You disappoint in that, too, humanity. Children. But I will tell that there is a door, and the keys to open it are words that have to be used in the right tone, not with irony, despair, or the other faces of entropy. Entropy is going to tell you that have already failed. Don't listen. The keys to the door are those words, used in the right way, used in the proper frame of mind. Words which, when you get past cynicism and disappointment, even if it takes a lot of effort and all day, open up into the balm against disappointment, and the solution to terrorism:

Hope. Love. Faith.

Well, then, humanity. What the fuck are you waiting for?

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Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Why Do You Write the Way You Write?

Lots of writers ask me why I write the way I do. Especially poets. There is an assumption behind the question: that writing is an act of will, or of self-expression, or of conscious activity. I dispute this assumption.

Why do I write the way I do? Because when I listen to the trees, the wind, the waters, the sky, the trees, the dancing fire pit, that's what I hear. I listen. I pay attention, and what I write is what I experience, and is my response to that experience.

I learned that from Matsuo Basho, the haiku master. I also learned that from Pauline Oliveros and John Cage and Morton Feldman, who each in their own way created musical situations in which listening was paramount. Oliveros took this to the point of almost sacred intensity. Interaction with the environment, by listening and responding, is central. Oliveros called it deep listening. Cage called it paying attention to the sounds of the environment. Feldman called it forth by playing his music always very softly.

I feel like the assumption behind the question, why do I write the way I do, is ultimately about ego. It's about wanting to fit a key into a lock and have a pat explanation. I feel like it's about control, in the end. In the days of social media, it's hard not to feel like it's also about narcissism, and self-empowerment, and self-expression, and emotional process work, and placing the individual personality foremost in the field of being.

This unspoken assumption about why writers write, perhaps especially poets, also leads me to be often asked about my writing habits. We have two generations of poetry workshops and MFA writing programs, now, which if you've been paying attention has led to an over-emphasis on craft. Why? Because you can't teach anything but craft; you can't teach heart, the writer has to have that, or develop that, on their own. When people ask me about my writing habits, I am alert to their quick judgments about how my habits differ from their own. According to one poet I knew, I have no discipline, because I write when listening calls me to write, not for an hour or two every morning, like a newspaper opinion editor. I don't write every day. I write when what I hear calls me to write; which takes me back to deep listening.

All of this puts me in a secondary stream to what poetry publishing is now. It puts me in a lineage of meditator-poets, nature-engagin artists, listening composers, writers whose work is based on observation and listening rather than milling their personal biographies for grist. Maybe that's why I rarely get published in the mainstream. There's not enough "I" in my poems, perhaps. I do not claim to be a great poet, or even a good one; but I *know* that some rejections from some quarters are due to the unfashionability of the way I write. Which is another assumption behind the question, that I also dispute.

Well, some of that is indeed about finding your niche, fitting a key into another lock. But some of that is not: it's about making an egoless art, rather than an art that projects personality-ego.

Egoless art is VERY unfashionable lately. Don't kid yourself into thinking that art isn't subject to fashions.

I don't know where my poems fit in; honestly, I haven't been trying very hard to find or create a niche. It is, or it is not. I do feel deeply connected to a lineage of writers, though; not just influences but kindred spirits. I certainly have the same small amount of ambition and ego as any artist, in wanting my work to be heard, seen, read by others. Another favorite poet of listening and response, Odysseas Elytis, once said, "Every poet needs an audience of three, and since every poet has two good friends, the search is for that elusive third." The poetry written the way I write has always had the two, and is always searching for the third. So, there is a stream of this kind of poetry, and there are many who do it. Perhaps they are content to be far outside the mainstream, and just keep listening.

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Friday, November 25, 2016

Gratitudes 2016

Gratitudes 2016

Every year I write Gratitudes instead of New Year's Resolution. This has been my practice for a number of years. I am going to start working on that. After the past actually fairly challenging year, and looking forward to having to redo all the civil rights and social justice progress we've made over the past fifty years, I'm honestly not sure where to start. I usually start small.

To be clear, I'm announcing intent, not completion. I will have to start somewhere, And I will start where and when I can.

I am struggling a bit with Gratitudes this morning. I am also feeling somewhat emotionally fragile this morning, after having felt more resilient these past few days.

Some of this, no doubt, is that now that the Festival of Being Grateful at the Feast has been accomplished, and it was a good one, now we must face the prospect of continuing to be grateful when not at a feast. But that's when it counts even more. Anyone can be grateful at the feast; gratitude goes deeper when there's apparently less to be grateful for.

Some of this, also, is that one has had a few days of joy and celebration in each others' company, and is very grateful for that, and now one must turn to face the unsolved problems and unaddressed fears that still hover in the corners of the room, that will not go away, because the world has become a Scarier Place overnight. One has had the days of horror, followed by some healthy days of forgetting about the horror and focusing on the joy and friends who share and co-create the joy, and now one has to get back to work.

What I will NOT be doing today is Retail Madness. I have clean-up to help with, leftovers to enjoy, and people to spend the day Doing Nothing with. I do not plan to subject my still-raw nerves in any way to the annual Consumer Madness Blow-Out (that phrase bigger typeface and lots of exclamation points) that seems to possess people. But then, we live in the culture of the Religion of Money, no matter what lip service is given to other religions, cults, sects, and belief-systems.

I cannot help but remember what the second Bush Presidency said needed to happen after 9/11: You people need to go out and do your patriotic duty and spend lots of money on things you don't need, to help boost the economy back into health, and revive the American spirit. Linking consumption and nationalism is one of the earmarks of fascism. (I said that in 2001, and nobody wanted to hear it.)

Well, huge sales on Black Friday only make sense if you actually have money to spend on things you don't really need. You might want them, and that's fine, but needing them is another story. (To be fair, I have a few close friends, most of them tech people, who do take advantage of the HUUUUGE SAAAALES to get tech stuff they actually DO need. That's just clever, creative timing about shopping, as opposed to consumerism per se.) And still, you have to have to disposable income to get things you need, even on sale. This year, as with last year, I must lay low.

Am I grateful for any of that? I am grateful that I still have some choices in life, including choices about what not to engage in. I am fearful of the times changing in such a way that choices continue to be legislated away from me (which if you want to be fair has been happening my entire lifetime; but I don't want to be fair about that), making me life harder rather than easier, creating more chaos at a time in my life when I can barely summon the strength to cope with existing chaos. I could list those fears, I've certainly thought them through in detail, and right now I don't want to.

Can I find something to be grateful for, in the current political climate of the public ascendancy of the rhetoric of hate and selfishness? That's a challenge. I suppose I can find something in the spinning coin in which Hope is on one side of the coin and Despair is on the other: hope seen in many people rallying together to fight for their rights and refusing to normalize fascism; despair in that those civil rights we spent the last two generations fighting to acquire will now have to be fought for all over again. That's the true dynamic with Hope/Despair (I am amazed that this isn't so bloody obvious to more people than it seems to be): it is the Tao, always spinning, the seed of the light born out of the darkness, the seed of the darkness always born out of the light. The Balance is the dynamic that keeps it spinning, which is good, because if it ever comes to rest permanently on one side, well, that's when things *really* fall apart.

I am grateful that I had a terrific Day of Feasting and Giving Thanks. (Spare me the postmodern cynical undercutting of that with whatever complaining you were thinking of replying with.) (You see: the spinning coin.) Thank you.

I am grateful that I don't have to do much today, the day after, either. Thank you.

I am grateful of who I am spending these days with, and where, and why, and for being provided with a haven in which I am free to spend my energy this morning on introspection rather than struggling to survive.

I am grateful that I don't have to struggle to just survive, this morning, this week, next week. Thank you.

I am grateful that I have the opportunity to spend my limited energy, this week, on creativity, on activism, rather than on struggling to survive. Thank you.

I am grateful that I do have friends who care, and are able to help me out when I really need it, even in small ways. I have needed so much support, and it has sometimes made me desperate (the fearful Despair side of the coin), and therefore not easy to be around. I acknowledge that.

I am grateful that I have learned to swallow my pride, and just fucking Ask For Help. I am still learning how to do that elegantly rather than desperately (thanks in part to the mentoring of Amanda Fucking Palmer); my apologies for when I have failed on that front.

I will continue to need support, going forward, and I worry sometimes about continuing to ask for help, because I DO know that everyone else needs help, too. I give it where I can, and pay it forward where I cannot. I will always be grateful, even when the clawed and scratchy-voiced thoughts dominate me that try to tell me that I am not worthy, and it is an uphill battle to remember that I AM.

I am grateful for neediness. Because I need to be needed, as much as I need to be supported. I need, like breathing, to be useful. John Cage spoke many times about how being useful is one of the most important values, underlying so many other definitions of what it means to be a "good" person. "Good" means nothing, because that is usually a Tribal morality concept in practice. "Useful" transcends good, if you just think about it for a minute.

I am grateful for opportunities to be of use. Even when I am feeling scared and desperate, and am bargaining for my survival, that does not negate that I am being of use to someone, even if seems like a barter or trade. Being useful helps me fight against the clawed and scratchy-voiced thoughts about being unworthy.

I'm very grateful that my multimedia installation in a corn crib at Silverwood County Park, titled "The Temple of Deep Time," created in 2014, was one of two installations extended far beyond the original time frame of the original project. I spent some time this past summer on maintenance and improvements, and am glad to see it go forward. Thank you.

In many ways, the past year or so has been, well, horrible. It's the art-making, the music, the art installations, that have kept me going. Sometimes the creative work is the only thing that keeps me going, so I'm very grateful to have had it. To keep going, I need to do even more. Thank you.

I'm very grateful that I've been offered so many opportunities in the past year or so and been asked to create location-specific landscape art and multimedia art. It's been fulfilling to be able to create, and I've been honored to be given so many opportunities. Thank you.

You want to know to practice Gratitudes?
What is the one thing you most hate doing?
Go do that.
And be grateful.

I am grateful for all of the people who have given me places to stay, this past year and a half of homelessness. Just having minimal security frees up so much of my energy otherwise spent on just surviving. If I have days and weeks when I don't want to go on, a lot of that is because I've been spending ALL of my energy on merely surviving, and none of it on anything that moves me forward, or feeds me creatively and spiritually (those are intertwined), and Despair looks like an endless tunnel of merely struggling to survive, with no point to it. (FUCK nihilism. FUCK you.)

I am grateful, therefore, that I have had a morning hour of science and solitude, to be able to hear these thoughts as they percolate up through the cracked and bubbling dolomitic bedrock of my recent experience. I am still catching up on being able to have this morning silence and solitude, which for me is as necessary as breathing, as necessary as host times out in the desert when I can Just. Stop. and listen to the stillness. This is my therapy. This is what keeps me sane.

I am grateful, also, therefore, to have access for now to a working kitchen that I don't have to set up, tear down, move, and spend all my energy on just making it work. Food security is a major relief. Food security is something you take for granted till you don't have it; just like being homeless.

I am grateful. Oh, I am still fearful. I am still fighting dire Despair, and depression. And I am grateful to have had even a few days when I had the strength TO fight, leftover from everything else I have to deal with.

Let's make this an Arts & Crafts Day.

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Tuesday, April 19, 2016

QDA: A Queer Disability Anthology

QDA: A Queer Disability Anthology

I have several poems in this anthology by disabled LGBTQ* poets, non-fiction writers, essayists, academics, critics, and prose fiction writers. I am very proud to be involved with this anthology, and my fellow writers. It is a Really Big Deal of an anthology, pretty much the first of its kind. I'm pleased that it is making waves in both the LGBT and the disability communities.

Since the book's release, in fall of 2015, there have been several group reading events around the US, a couple of which I have been pleased to have read at. Being a part of this has been fulfilling, exciting, enlivening, scary, revealing, courageous and cowardly, and mostly just honest, authentic, and real. It is something that needs to be talked about.

Featuring fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and comics by 48 writers from around the world, QDA: A Queer Disability Anthology proves that intersectionality isn’t just a buzzword. It’s a penetrating and unforgettable look into the hearts and souls of those defiant enough to explore their own vulnerabilities and demonstrate their own strengths.

“Queer sexuality and disability places me so far outside the realms of the everyday that it renders people silent.” —Jax Jacki Brown

Here is a gathering of people with the transformative—and political—power of love that transcends gender and ability. Ignorance is the biggest barrier.

“I feel exhilarated that you might actually accept me as a sexual being; that you might see the deliciousness that is my disability.” —Andrew Gurza

“An anthology often creates a community. In this respect, QDA is truly groundbreaking because it brings two wonderful communities together. There is not a single style, genre, or opinion in the book, but an orchestra of voices. Their seminal works mirror—and do not mirror—each other. Taken together, they light a brilliant path of honesty.” —Jennifer Bartlett, co-editor of Beauty Is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability

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Saturday, April 16, 2016

Playing and Making

Music performance and composition:

Lots of us play musical instruments, or sing. I play adequately, and I sing well (albeit not this week, thanks to pneumonia). But I was not a performance major, practicing several hours per day. I was a composition major. My urge has always been to Make, rather than recreate.

I do believe you have to be able to do both. I can read music like a sonofabitch, and I could do so even before I went to music school. I've been musical since I was 4 or 5 years old. I started piano at age 6 or 7, and I started singing in choir and chorus at that age, as well. The Lutheran church in Ann Arbor that my family went to had a music staff who were at the University of Michigan, and we did a lot of ambitious music in church choir: before age 24 I had sung probably a third of all the Bach Cantatas, some more than once. So I have some pretty good performance chops.

But I'll never be as good a Chapman Stick player, or bassist, as several of my friends are. I don't put in the practice time. (I'm not a slacker. In fact, for most of my adult life, I had an undiagnosed chronic illness that sapped my strength and willpower, and which I will spend the rest of my life recovering from.) There was a period in my 30s when I was in several bands that focused on improvised music; so you could say I was composing on a weekly basis, and playing spontaneous music. But most of that went direct to recording, and was never notated. It's only in the past five or six years that I've begun seriously notating written music scores again, and I've been prolific throughout this period. (Within the limitations of chronic illness and post-illness, always.) When I was in my 30s I did not suck as a player, but in fact I'm a better player now, even though I play gigs less often: time and experience do that, no matter what age you begin. I don't have as many opportunities to play, which sucks, but on balance I'm musically satisfied because I'm writing more.

My focus was always on Making. On writing music. On composing. I have been reading a biography of Wayne Shorter, which made a comparison between Shorter's meticulous writing of music and Joe Zawinul's habit of improvising a piece, then transcribing it, and declaring it done. Actually, I do both. Both of those methods work for me. Most of the music I recorded in my 30s and 40s was never notated, but it WAS recorded, and stands as pieces. I did on occasion transcribe music I had recorded and made it into a score others could play. ("Night/Fire" on my album The Western Lands was done this way.) If I had enough energy, or an assistant, I could transcribe most of what I recorded in those years, and give you a score you could play from. (But I don't. If I have any regrets about surviving chronic illness, it's that I never had the energy to do what I wanted to do, and so much never got finished.)

You see, that's been the trade-off: I will never learn to play as many songs as many of my friends do, and I'll never play them as well as they do. (Mostly. I do have my moments.) But most of them don't compose as much I do, either. That's the trade-off I observed way back in music school, where I was majoring as a composer: what your emphasis is, is probably what it will in future. Bruce Cockburn, the great songwriter, once said something that really stuck with me: "I don't know many songs that I didn't write." (He then said, "But this is one of them," and launched into Monty Python's "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life." A song, I might add, that I also know, that I didn't write.)

In music school I focused on making new music; all of us music school students who were not performance-track were required to play or sing, and have declared instruments, but even then in my piano and percussion minors I preferred to focus on new music. (Or music so old it was new all over again: hence my minors in Medieval and Renaissance music.) In music school, and after, I was involved with a group of composers and performers who presented concerts of new music several times a year; some of us were both performers and composers, and traded hats as needed. It was a very fertile ground upon which to write and have performed new music scores. It was also the time in which I began to learn to play jazz, and improvise.

Im not sure why I wanted to write about this, today. Maybe it's because I never stop thinking about music, no matter what else is going on. Maybe it's because I see some of my Stick playing pals and other musician pals having all these minor and major successes in their musical lives that make me want to stand up and cheer. And I do cheer! And then, sometimes, I think about how the touring musician life was never one I could take on (undiagnosed chronic illness, for one; opportunities, for another). It makes me very happy to see some of my friends out there on the road, and to get to their concerts as often as I am able (energy permitting: I'd go to a hell of a lot more concerts if I had the strength).

I genuinely enjoy hearing my friends make their music. I love hearing what they do. I'll never play as well as they do, and I'm okay with that.

And then I go home and go back to writing. It's just what I do.

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Wednesday, April 06, 2016

Pacem In Terris

Pacem In Terris

Peace is not merely the absence of war.

Peace is not merely tranquility, or serenity, although those are also sublime.

Peace is an active (rather than passive) state of whole being in harmony with others, with oneself, and with the all.

Peace like a river sends a taproot out of nowhere and into my heart.

Peace is aware and awake.

Peace is connection to and radical acceptance of what is.

Peace is an unexpected gift and grace that can in an instant redeem the world.

From out of nothing, peace is created.

Peace hums like a bee whose entire being is in joy with the flower.

Peace is the song of thanks that rises from the throat of the weary pilgrim who arrives home to find it uplifted and more holy than before.

Peace is a grace.

Peace is a place beyond words.

Peace is an infinite voice singing in a place filled with light.

Tikkun ha-olam. Pacem In Terris.

Peace is the world made whole, the spirit healed, the body refreshed and released.

Peace is the name of the night we walked the fields filled with fireflies as numerous as the stars overhead.

Peace cannot be destroyed, only forgotten. It is not peace that departs when life is mired in blood, it is we who walk away from peace.

In peace there is no loneliness, as all is one.

Peace is the rock-solid conviction that, just for today, I will not harm or hurt or kill, just today, just for today.

I greet the divine in you, in peace, as you greet the divine in me.

The sword of peace cuts through illusion to leave in its wake only the real.

Peace in the warrior's heart acts only to protect and defend, and ceases all action when the need is done.

True peace, once experienced, can never truly leave you, or truly be forgotten. Its scent is the perfume of the desert, its trace the last line of blue before sunrise.

There is no loneliness in peace, only solitudes.

Peace is the ground of genuine love, love that has no room in it for the corrosions of worry, jealousy, or fear.

Peace as the ground of love accepts and releases all; everything that goes shall return; everything that loves shall be redeemed.

Peace is the redemption of the world.

Those who make peace are the Saviors of God: may they blossom from the all that is into the flower that must be.

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Monday, March 14, 2016

What I'm For, or How To Discover Your Purpose In Life By Failing At Everything Else

When I was young, I wanted to grow up to be a scientist.

I spent several years on that, training in the sciences, especially the earth sciences. I pursued that goal all the way to college level classes in geology and chemistry. What stopped me was math studies. I placed in advanced math till the eighth grade, and then I got stuck. Later in life, my Mom said it was because of the math teacher. She had seen it at the time, but had not been able to change it, or talk to me about it; she thought there were psychological problems in play. I had really liked my math teacher at the time, for example he liked to play Beethoven's Sixth Symphony during class while we worked, but he did somehow derail my confidence in my math studies.

I'm not really sure how that happened. I only remember that after 8th grade math, I felt stupid rather than smart in math studies. I had little confidence in my own ability. When it came to college entry exams, I scored nearly perfectly in Language Arts, and only at 50 percent in Math on the SATs. This was after scoring in the top 1 percent in every test battery taken throughout my school years. I still somehow scored in the top 5 percent overall for college entry exams, and placed out of both English and Foreign Language requirements, by getting top marks in Advanced Placement classes for both. But not for math.

I was a gifted child who didn't want to be one. I was one of those child prodigies. But I was bullied for being smart, for being a teacher's pet, for being different. I wanted nothing more than to fit in, to be liked, to be accepted. Well, that never happened. I continued in the sciences, till college, and loved doing geology in the field, partly because I loved being outdoors, and then I realized something.

I wasn't meant to be a scientist.

Well, I was, and none of that work was wasted, but there was a thing in me that could never be suppressed or ignored or set aside. It just wasn't possible. It was too powerful to ignore. It's too much more of what I was, and supposed to be.

I wanted to be a scientist. But I was supposed to be a Maker.

I was born to make art. I'm a natural creative. It's the thing I do best. (Really. I can barely handle mundane tasks like managing money, by contrast.)

It took me a very long time to accept that I'm supposed to an artist, a composer, a worker, a person who makes things. New things. A MAker

I say this with neither pride nor humility. I am neither egotistical about it, or falsely humble about it. It's just a fact. Making things is what I do best.

It's really the only thing I'm any good at. I've tried a lot of other career paths in life, and mostly failed at them. I'm looking at a future of failure again, every time I try to fit in, or be accepted, or be like other people. Fitting in never worked in school, when I was being bullied, and it still never seems to work in my adult life. I seem to fated to always be "other." Again, that's just data, not ego.

In mid-college I changed majors from science to the arts. I switched from geology to music, and transferred to the Music School. Almost everyone tried to talk me out of it, including the Dean of the Music School. But the fact is, I had been playing music since I was 5 or 6 years old, singing as a boy soprano soloist. I began piano studies at age 7. (That was inevitable, as Mom was a concert pianist and music educator. Both my sister and I studied piano. I think it made us better thinkers overall, as later education studies seem to suggest.) Everyone wanted me to continue in science, get a good job, and continue to be an amateur musician. But I couldn't do it. In fact, I had been composing music, and had even had a few pieces played, since I was a young boy. I had won awards for short story fiction by age 16. I had gotten interested in photography at a young age, and got better with every year. Even when I was out studying geology in the field, all summer long in Wyoming, my very first college class, when I returned home I had already taken so many photos in the mountains that people started to notice them. I was a gifted child, and stood out, even though a lot of the time I just wanted to disappear.

After music school, my first job after graduation was ironically with Mathematical Reviews, a monthly review journal, where I got in on the ground floor of the desktop publishing revolution, and became a computer graphics expert, a digital type designer, and more. Working in corporate graphic design jobs was creative enough to be fulfilling for me, and I did it for many years, but it still wasn't enough. A book design company, one of the best places I ever worked for, allowed me to use their gear to teach myself Photoshop, and become even more of an expert. I also started to win awards for photography and digital art. I worked there till they corporately downsized. The book publishing business collapsed starting in 2000, and has radically changed since then. Nonetheless, I still have all those skills.

And corporate employment just never seems to work. I can never seem to make it work. It's like it's prevented. And then my life changed due to chronic illness. I suspect those corporate doors may be forever closed to me now.

So I've got no choice, now, but to go forward with no hope of success but with my only choice being to be what I am, a Maker. I make stuff. It's all I'm any good at. I don't know if it will be enough to sustain me. I guess it's time to do what I'm good at, and forget about the rest.

It's pretty scary, because I've developed trust issues. Really big ones. I guess the only thing I actually trust anymore is Making, in which I never seem to doubt myself, and in which I always have full self-confidence in my ability and need to make things.

I make art of some kind every day. (Well, some really bad days I can't. But that's a symptom of a dark day. I hate it, but I try to get past it.) Even if everything else falls apart, that's still true. ON good days I make things, on bad days I make things, I just make things. I guess that's how to tell that's what you're for: it's the thing that you never stop doing, even when all the rest has been taken away. So that's what you do. That's what you're for.

And that's all I can do. It's all that's left. Wish me luck.

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Thursday, March 10, 2016

Trapped in a motel in Escanaba

[/rant mode/ alert]

And now I feel like crap. I was feeling okay awhile ago, but then feelings rush over you like the weather, and your internal weather changes in an instant, and that's that.

What am I doing in a hotel room again? Well, I was hoping to camp these past two nights, since it was unseasonably warm. But that didn't work out, in part because on neither night did I really have the energy to do it; plus as soon as I get really tired, I begin coughing like a consumptive, a leftover from that cold/flu I had three weeks (or more) ago. It's like the dread night fungus keeps growing in your lungs, a mad parasite of neglect. *cough cough* I just didn't have enough spoons for camping. I'm a little annoyed about that. I'm also determined to "Escape From Wisconsin" again in the near future, and go camping when it's a few weeks warmer, and I'm a few weeks more rested.

Escape From Wisconsin.

No offense, folks, but Wisconsin has turned into a toxic sludge morass hellpit for me. I must leave. I must find better pastures elsewhere. It's not your fault, unless you voted for anything Republican in Wisconsin since 2008, in which case it's at least your fault that I can't find work, that the economy in WI tanked and hasn't recovered, that our current Governor is a hollow man who only ambition is personal and who has done more to tear the net of the social contract than any past Governor of WI ever dreamed possible, creating a social climate in which sociopathy is in ascendance and empathy is a quaint notion of yesteryear. In which case, we are reaping the whirlwind that you sowed, and gods bless you and keep you safe. For me, not so much. So my big job over the next several weeks is basically finding the best way to get the frak out of Dodge City, in such a way as to not destroy my health again in the process.

I'm also feeling trapped and unhappy in this Escanaba hotel room because tomorrow I have to go back into the venomous black hole sludge pit that Wisconsin has become for me. When I hit the road to head up to Minneapolis, then up to Duluth and Lake Superior, I was quite calm and even happy. As soon as I turn around to go back into Wisconsin, I begin to feel like crap. This has happened every time I've had to go back home in the past two or three years. Why? Because my life has been a hell of loss and desolation, and all of that happened between Beloit and Madison.

Trust me, though, there have been some astoundingly superb, wonderful and good things that have also happened in that same tanged timespace locus, and for which I have only good memories and grateful feelings. Yet the scales are nowhere near balanced. The good is no longer either necessary or sufficient to maintain a desire to try to make things work out, in a place where nothing has worked out (well, mostly nothing), and every year of the ten years since I moved back to WI has been worse than the previous, not better. I moved back to be the full-time live-in caregiver for my parents, giving up my own life and career—with no regrets—during which I almost died. I mean that literally: an undiagnosed chronic illness that I had had for at least 15 or 20 years by that time was driven into an acute and near-lethal phase by the strain of being a full-time live-in caregiver, and then having to deal with everything that followed upon the deaths of my parents. There was a house with thirty years of Stuff to sort through and get rid of, just for starters. It was more than I could deal with, and I did have a lot of help dealing with it—for which I will forever be grateful, because without that angelic help I'd probably be dead. Literally. I'm not exaggerating. I'm not being a drama queen. I am reporting what my doctors said to me over the past few years: without help, I'd be dead.

If you are ever ashamed of asking for help from your friends, get over it, grow the frak up, swallow your pride and your shame and your guilt, and FUCKING ASK FOR HELP. It will be there. Maybe not always, and maybe only in limited ways, and maybe not in the forms that you expect it to be in—but it WILL be there.

I'm feeling like crap tonight, and writing it all out. You are not required to read it, or respond, or do a frakking thing about it. The truth is very simple: sometimes all I really need is to fell like just one person has actively heard me. And then I can go on. This does not require "fixing." It requires listening. Nothing more, nothing less.

I used to have friends, now apparently former friends, who are now afraid of me, apparently, because I'm too intense for them. Well, I would respectfully point out that almost dying (twice, not just the once reported above) can kind of make you so aware of the basic realities of life that you do get a little intense. It deeply sorts out your priorities in life, and fairly brutally. I am so very aware that No One Here Gets Out Alive. So get over your fucking ego selves and just start being good to each other.

That's all. That's really all that it's about.

We might all be born into the species homo sapiens sapiens, but that does automatically make you into a human being. It gives you the POTENTIAL to BECOME a human being, a fully realized, adult, grown up human being, capable of both competency in life and being aware that the Golden Rule basically reduces to: Don't be a dick to each other. Just fucking be nice to each other. Apparently this needs to be shouted from the rooftops far more often than it has been; certainly centuries of social and spiritual evolution have yet to convert the majority of homo sapiens sapiens away from being monkeys throwing excrement at each other through the bars of their cages. Which is what you get if you don't develop your potential to become a human being. You need to take that potential and DO something with it. Otherwise you're just a smart mammal, and not a fully realized human being.

I readily admit to the vice of impatience, because my hyper-acute awareness of mortality, stemming from almost dying, twice, leaves me with no desire to see love wasted, or time wasted. You are no longer allowed to be bored: you don't have time for it. Life's too short. If you ever find yourself approaching the Kingdom of Boredom (which ultimately lies within you), take another road immediately, towards something much less deadly to the heart and mind. Life's too short to waste being bored. Seriously.

Before I began typing out this annoyed longish rant, I wrote an annoyed little song lyric, for a bad song I'll never actually write, which began with the phrases: "Trapped in a motel in Escanaba / there's nothing wrong / but there's nothing right." That's when I knew I was feeling bad, rather than good. Sometimes you don't know what you're feeling or thinking till you make art about it. Which is another frakking reason to make art about everything. Figure it out.

Here's the whole song lyric. Oh, and by the way, [/end rant mode/]

Trapped in a motel in Escanaba
there's nothing wrong
but there's nothing right

If I'd had my way
I'd be camped by the water
drinking in the campfire light

But here I am in a cheap motel
the water's fine but the heat don't work
the night's fooled up, the neighbor's a jerk
but somehow we'll have to get through because
we're all trapped in a motel in Escanaba

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Wednesday, March 02, 2016

Winter Waters

walking by the lake blue-white in half-melte
distant scraping resolves to
sails further out, skaters with parasails
in just enough wind, metal on ice
wet gliding, steel shaving, memory of iceboats

several hours' drive further north
there are bear tracks in late snow
some kind of quiet god woken too early
to own his still-twilit domain
long summer evenings have not yet sprung
out of blue bogs, green cattails, moose brown

there's a river only half-awake
this blue hour of year, stone clatter
musical chime of cold flow on icicle
blue tears hung by spray on granite over shale ledge
this single river carving its shallow valley
scrapes dense kraton, tough sheets, resistant caprock

even further where loons will migrate later
hallow sea-edge open watered haloed green
white pack ice wind-sails into the corner bay
lead left half-open, ready someday for seals
where shallow river-mouth meets tidal swell

we write what we have, when it comes
on shore sand, on half-drowned leaf
brown with tannins and river rust
the land writes on my own waters
circulating sea-tide of red blood and bone shell
skull under skin just waiting its time to emerge

back south in more habitable home
late snow coats milkweed pods whiter
than white, late broken buds exploding with cotton
wild rice stalks clump like black bamboo
and the ring of open water mudding the shore shines

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Thursday, February 18, 2016

Why Genre Fiction Is Better Than Mainstream Fiction













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Wednesday, February 17, 2016

Writing: On Not Being Able to Fit Into the Boxes

I have difficulty even seeing, much less respecting and obeying, what some writers and editors feel are hard-and-fast lines between poetry, prose, nonfiction, creative writing, and essay. To me those all blend together. The most interesting books I read tend to be like the Japanese ideal of zuihitsu, "following the brush," the great exemplars of which style are Essays In Idleness and The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon. The American writers who have given us journal-books that move easily between prose, poetry, poetic prose, prose-poetry, and creative nonfiction essay, are who really stay with me. Andrew Schimmel, Gary Snyder, Paul Blackburn's The Journals, which I have only recently discovered, to my great delight.

I love the form of haibun, which is the form Basho's travel journal books are written, with alternating prose and haiku sections, on some pages just a single poem, on other pages a formal haibun which is a prose description of a moment or subject followed by a haiku on the same moment or subject but from yet a different direction. In not irrelevant ways, the haibun is my ideal form for writing.

I see when literary publishers offer open reading periods, during which anyone can submit a manuscript or collection, that they often create fixed categories for acceptance. You have to submit through the Poetry gate, or the Fiction gate, or the Nonfiction gate. But what if your manuscript moves between all of these? What if there is no real distinction, or boundary between them, in your writings? Where do submit them? I often feel a kind of decision paralysis in the face of such categorical requirements, and end up not submitting anything anywhere. Because inevitably I'll place my manuscript in the wrong box, and be automatically rejected.

The fact is, my best writing is All-of-the-above. The writing of mine that I like best, perhaps I should more truthfully say. The stuff that I write that excites me doesn't live within the boxes of Prose or Poetry, but tend to be Prose-AND-Poetry. I readily grant that there are lots of editors who just don't know what to do with that. I'm sure I've caused more than one headache which led to rejection. (There is also the issue that when you read a certain genre, yo bring presuppositions—one hesitates to say prejudices—to one's reading, and things that don't go along the usual trails get rejected not because they're bad but because they are not comprehended.)

Well, I don't want to make editors' jobs harder, and I'm not trying to be difficult, AND it seems to me that the rigid categories between writing genres are in fact a barrier rather than an aide. They are illusory, and often arbitrary, and even occasionally rather dismissive.

Because the one genre I don't really write in, and have no real "feel" for writing in the genre that doesn't like to be called a genre, namely, mainstream literary linear-narrative prose fiction. I have written in that non-genre-genre, an have even been published in it. It is just that it seems like an artificial construct to me, like nothing real at all. Virginia Woolf was right: life is not lived as a neatly-arranged linear prose narrative, as consciousness is both more diffuse and more Brownian (nay, distractible) than the artificial construct of linear narrative pretends it is. And not just Woolf says this, but Albert Einstein, whose spacetime theories strongly imply that everything is always happening all at once, and time itself is a constructed fiction of consciousness that we make up to be able to cope with time.

It's very likely that I will only rarely ever get published. (And thank you ever so much to those sympathetic editors who have been willing to take risks on my behalf!) I just can't seem to stay in the boxes.

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Monday, February 15, 2016


The lawyers call you to tell you you're doomed.
There's no recourse. You have to start all over again.
But the task is Sisyphean. Why even bother?
Life goes on. Does it? I'm afraid of good days
because they're always followed by soul-killers,
days you look at the knife block in the kitchen
and wonder. I can never seem to have a good day
without being slapped down the very next day.
Some tepid creek of dull everyday shallow streams
would seem preferable. But I don't seem able to take
that route, either. I'm not wired for ordinary.
You end up all alone, because no one wants to hear it anymore.
Can't really blame them, although it's tempting.
Who wants to hang out with a perpetual loser blocked
by gods who want to keep him stuck till he dries up
and blows away. Driving out alone into the desert
and waiting to die seems like a welcoming option.
My life is a Samuel Beckett laugh-riot of prisons.
It would be a lot funnier if you weren't living it.
I'm looking right now. This bleak window opens on
black and white and dismal grey, an apartment backyard
overlooking an industrial backyard and main street
which birds and squirrels don't bother to name.
Names are temporary, and change with the inhabitants.
My life is a hotel room in which I never stay anywhere,
there's nowhere to stay. I lost everything
and that's not enough. Do I even get to tell people?
No, that why lies an endless circle of ridiculous maimings,
none of them more visible than the invisible disability
I can neither manage nor convince anyone is real.
Like there's a point. Push that boulder up the mountain,
it will just roll back down again. Why bother

Here's a thought: since you're going to end up there anyway,
just head for the desert now. You're going to die there,
so why wait. It's just masochistic to stay where the world
has let you know how much it hates you being there. Go.
Don't even bother to wrap up affairs. Just go. Those who are left
can have the dregs that no one wants. Savor freedom.
Part of the samurai's code was, When you know you're going to die,
you can do anything.
So go. Let the boulders roll where they will.
Nothing to stop you. Why do you hesitate? Do you so cling
to this hateful existence that you would rather stay and suffer
rather than be free? The bars of the cage hold your eyes
but the cage door is open. You just have to turn your head to see it.
Last time I lived in this place it was just the same.
Here I am back in that same cage, clinging to those same bars.
This time, I'll notice the door. I'll let go of the boulder.
I'll just walk out and disappear into the void.
Like the nothingness before and after the Universe, why wait.

I can't cope with limbo. That's all.
I just need to know something's happening.
I've spent far too much time, this past era,
waiting on other people's agendas who forget mine.
I just need to feel like things are moving forward
at a rate faster than geologic.

It's about feeling like anyone has heard. It's like
a basic need, a mammary need, to feel like you're not shouting
down a well for no reason, not even getting an echo back.
It's like there's a void of silence around your heart.
Nothing can get through, be heard, be present. Time shifts
into its slowest gear when silence replaces sympathy.
Oh we are needy. We are clingy in our need, and fearful.

The entire reason for being is to not be alone.

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Monday, February 08, 2016

Creativity: Observing Improvisation

Observations on making art in the moment of making it:






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Sunday, January 24, 2016

Who Are We, and Where Are We Going

a Spiral Dance essay

It's pathetic, I suppose, that I'm now more comfortable in anonymous hotel rooms than anywhere I'm supposed to be living, I have a place to live in Madison, now, with a very positive and even supportive roommate, but sometimes I still prefer being alone. That's really why I stopped at a hotel last night. Too tired to deal with people. No spoons left for social graces. Too much effort to even talk to people I like and want to be with. I just wanted to be alone and silent. I don't know how to survive without silence and solitude, anymore. Happiest out there driving alone on the road, in the desert, or forest, or wherever there aren't many people, or any.

I've been kicked out of every group I've ever belonged to. It keeps happening. I should accept it by now, but I keep fighting it. Every group I've ever given my loyalty to, I've been forced to leave behind. I keep getting kicked out of the nest, before I'm ready to leave on my own. Either I've outgrown them, or the gods want me to move on, or it's time and I don't want to go, or fate moves the pieces on my board and I have to leave.

It keeps happening. It's happening again.

Madison, WI, isn't supposed to be where I live. During the crushing end of times in Beloit, when I was having to see everything I own, including my home, the only home I've ever owned, I dreamed that I could give Madison a chance. After all, I used to live there, and had and have many friends, and musician partners, and so on. I've given it a good try, but everything, literally everything, has told me not to make a hime there. No signs of inevitable placement. I've been prevented at every turn. That's the usual sign.

I went through the hell of trying to rent an apartment in Madison, only to be confronted by the unsolvable Catch-22 of: 1. You can't rent an apartment unless you have a job, or credit, or income source. 2. You can't get a job unless you have a street address of a place to live, like an apartment. That paradox is what me onto the road in early November, where I spent almost two months out West; two months, I must say, that were almost the only happy times I had in all of 2015. Everyone noticed. Everyone commented on it. I was happier out West than I had been all year. Less stressed. More positive.

Then I came back to Wisconsin. And the stress immediately got worse again. And then I got bullied, and had to flee a situation where I had been staying. And that pushed me back out on the road again. If only for more healing via travel.

Then I came back.

I'm exhausted, right now, because after two weeks on the road, to Ann Arbor then down to Tennessee and Kentucky to check out another possible living situation, which did not pan out, I had to immediately go back to Ann Arbor for a job interview. I sucked at the interview, and I don't think I'll get the job, but the more I thought about it the more clear it was: I am being invited to live anywhere except Madison. It's time to go.

I got really clear, driving back towards Madison, although stopping short at a hotel before getting there, that Wisconsin is hell for me now and I just need to leave it behind. I got really, really clear; it's so obvious that I should have seen it before, that all my remaining time spent in Madison will be about preparing to leave. It's true, there are details to finish up of this life. I won't rush, if the gods permit, and I know I won't be staying much longer. A few months, probably.

Wisconsin has been very hard on me for the past decade, and it's never going to emotionally neutral there. All that suffering will always leave an aura of sour apples behind. Maybe not in the greenwood per se, but everywhere there are people. So it's time to go. I have more Stuff to get rid of, from the storage locker, and I have time to say goodbye properly to some long term friends, but then I will be gone. These past few months were offered to me, in the words of a friend, as a Farewell Tour. And that's how I am treating them. I won't say de ice what kind of Farewell, just yet. It doesn't have to be that final one, although for awhile that too was in the cards. But it's definitely a Farewell to the life that used to be, that I have now outgrown, and need to put behind me, so I can actually live and thrive, elsewhere. That's the truth of this. That's also why hotels feel better than what used to be "home."

I've never been able to "go home again" in my life. (Cue Thomas Wolfe.) I've never really been able to go back, and stay, anywhere I used to live. I've always been required to live in a new place. I know that on some level that the gods park me in a new place, to be of service there, so that my frequency of light can be used to brighten up a dark place. I'm really tired of always being alone, of never finding a loving partner, although I accept this as part of my path. You're getting a lot more honesty from me, tonight, in this hotel, than anyone is probably prepare to deal with. Well, deal with it. This life path I am on is nomadic, is lonely, is demanding, and has its powerful rewards that sometimes make it all feel like it's been worth it, although not that often.

And I have to keep going.

Caroline Myss, one of my spiritual directors this lifetime, says: Loyalty is a beautiful tribal quality, especially when it is conscious loyalty, a commitment that serves the individual as well as the group. Extremes of loyalty that harm one's ability to protect oneself, however, qualify as a belief pattern from which one needs to free oneself.

That nails it on the head. When I first give my loyalty to a group, I am very conscious of it, and very aware that service is the key: serving others, we serve ourselves. Yet I tend to give my loyalty a bit too fiercely, and it does come back to bite me. Because I make the mistake of thinking that others also give their loyalty as I do. That's one reason I've been kicked out of the nest so many times. People change, and I find myself alone in where I gave my loyalty, with no reciprocation anymore.

I don't really want to die, anymore. I'm not really suicidal. But I do still have days when I just don't care, when I'm too tired to care, and don't want to go on. Lots of honesty, here. Days I can't face anything normal or socially typical. When I'd rather be out there talking to the Green Man God of the Woods than any human. When Dionysus has my love, and you don't. Days I just can't deal with the superficiality, the inanity, the shallow self-regard. Days when I could cheerfully be a hermit in the desert, and talk to the coyotes more than people. I'm half wild as it is, I guess I always was. Maybe that's why I keep getting kicked out of every nest I've ever tried to build. It's happening again, right now. Let me just pull the knife out of my back, before I continue. There. That's better.

The last year has been about getting rid of or being forced to let go of everything I owened, everything left to me by my parents, all my money, my condo, my belongings, my whole life here. Another nest just taken away. Apparently I'm just a drama queen for ever mentioning it, or for it affecting my mood, or for being so exhausted that I'm not perky or cheerful enough, for it giving me a "bad attitude." I guess that's true. Never mind that it's been the most horrific decade of my entire life, beginning with the deaths of my parents more or less in my arms, passing through almost dying from chronic illness, and finally culminating in the Year I Lost Everything.

Well, so what.

Time to move on. Time to start over somewhere else. Time to go back out to the desert, or the woods, and start over elsewhere, with a lot less baggage, including the physical. Since that seems to be the pattern of my life, I might as well embrace it. I don't know if I will ever live with people anymore, I'll just drop in for a visit. A good visit. With some people, a very good visit. But love and sex? Probably never going to be a permanent thing, for me. Always moving on. I can accept that, too. It doesn't hurt too much, tonight, to embrace that. After all, being pansexual or an omnisexual mystic means I've had sex with the sky and the mountains as often or more than sex with people, men or women or both.

I like people. I really do. I just can't build permanent love relationships with them. I mean, other than as family of choice, which I do love and am grateful for. I just seem to be the wanderer, the warrior, doomed to be homeless, rootless, and so on. That's not self pity talking, that's just acknowledging the archetypes that rule a life.

So, here I go, again. Writing this out in a hotel in the middle of the night after collapsing into sleep upon arrival. That's why you get so much honesty, at the moment, no point in lying to myself. No need to pretend anything other than what it is. And we go on.

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Tuesday, January 12, 2016

Floating in Space

I suppose my mood is being affected
by a lot of dying right now. I'm reading death poems
by the saints and angels, the Zen masters
who on their deathbeds would dictate one last poem,
haiku, tanka, Chinese syllabic quatrain, whatever.
The enlightened masters gave one last lesson
when departing. One of the greatest of masters
left us with the haiku: "Now that I'm enlightened,
I'm just as miserable as ever." I suppose that must
be true, or at least hopeful. Meanwhile I read poems
from Jim Harrison, of late life, the darkest things
I've read from him since "Letters to Yesinin," where
he wrote to Sergei as a way of not joining Sergei,
not killing himself and becoming another dead poet.
That whole book, and one other, inspired me to do the same,
not kill myself, when I was dying, or so close to it
that I didn't want to live. I didn't care. Nothing
was less fun than living, just then.
And today the news is full of the last words
from another saint, David Bowie. Someone once asked
John Coltrane what he wanted to do, now that he had changed
the entire face of jazz. He said, "I want to become a saint."
And he did. THere's a church in San Francisco
dedicated to Trane's sainthood, where they wroship
with an all-day free jazz jam. I can't think what's more fitting.
Now Bowie. I'm not sentimental. I never cry when expected.
I reserve my tears for when I cannot prevent them,
which is rarely the usual suspects or times.
Some movies will make me weep consistently, who remains
dry-eyed at most funerals. The truth is, when you're too full
of feeling it stops you up rather than brims over.
When it's too much, you go numb, at least for awhile,
and nothing can come out without explosives.
The tributes that get to me are the ones as weird as
who inspired them: like Chris Hadfield singing
on the International Space Station, a free-fall rendition
of "Ground Control to Major Tom." Hollywood, never the best
at being tasteful or sublime, couldn't pay for a backdrop
or special effects like that. Actual guitars floating in space.
Now this long distracting mournful stretch of a day
is ending. All day I've tried to focus on what must be done,
and never got as far as chores or duties. I was stuck
on the cusp of contemplation, a tired man sitting on a stump
in a desert thunderstorm, weeping.
What else is there to do? I'll tell you:
If you want to make a tribute to the artists who have changed
your life, do something at least as amazing as what they did
that changed yours, or at least inspired you.
DOn't settle for weeping with the herd. Make a fire.
Here's a random guitar. Place it on the funeral bin,
or set it slowly spinning down the length of the tin can
out there in space, with the Earth rotating out the window.
Don't imitate, steal. Be just as good as your gods.
After all, that's the minimum tribute they deserve.

Chris Hadfield performing Bowie's song "Space Oddity" on the Space Station

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Monday, January 11, 2016

Wizardry 2016: Notes


What I need more of in my life, what I need to remember, is wild magic, not rule bound and law bound magic. Everything you need to learn, you can, from the trees, the wind, the old stones, the lake. No explanations or justifications are necessary. I am far more wild than that. I need to remember and embrace the wild.

It feels sometimes like all I know anymore is despair, doubt, suffering. But a wizard's way begins in words. Naming is a powerful thing. Change the words, and you change the story, and maybe the story's ending. Words are a wizard's tool, although there are many things behind words. Use the tools, change yourself, change the world.

Another thing about wizardry and wizards: They notice everything. Everything. And they never lose their sense of wonder. Even at ordinary things. Everything is a source of wonder.

Half of wizardry, like empathy, is deep listening. Listen to what the world tells you. Most people can't shut up long enough to actually listen to anything. Are you that afraid of silence, that nervous about gaps in social interaction? Try just listening for awhile, without spending all your energies thinking of your next reply.

If you want to leave a tribute who an artist who made a difference to you, who changed your life somehow, do what that artist did: don't copy what everyone else is doing, make something transcendent, memorable, and durable. Make it count.

Basho said: “Do not imitate the masters. Seek what they sought.”

Be just as good as your gods. That's the minimum tribute they deserve.

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Gratitudes 2015

It is very difficult for me to write Gratitudes for 2015. I won't pretend otherwise. I may have to start very small.

(I'm feeling a bit scattered and distracted as I write this tonight, because earlier I was verbally assaulted, which has re-triggered some PTSD about bullying, meanwhile I managed somehow in the past day to upset my touchy stomach due to somehow getting a wheat gluten hit against my gluten allergy. Never mind. Onward.)

I might start with the background of why I have a hard time with Gratitudes this year. I could start with the fact that 2015 was the year in which I lost everything. My home. Most of my belongings. My inheritance. My financial cushion. My application for disability. Several friends. I could mention that I was homeless for seven months in 2015, and unemployed, and stuck in the catch-22 of You can't rent an apartment without having a credit history or a current job to list, but you can't apply for a job unless you have an address where you live. I could mention that I have been verbally abused and bullied twice in the past week, something beyond Holiday Stress and into ridiculous mirrors in which people yelled at me for having a bad attitude but in fact were exemplifying in their own actions what they yelled at me about. (It's called projection, and it's one of the most pernicious strategies of the bully, and the person living with no awareness of the consequences of their own actions in the world.) I could mention the times I've approqched taking my own life this year, because life was too painful, too exhausting, too horrible, and I didn't care in those moments whether I lived or died, and would have preferred dying, just to get some relief. I could mention how I had to sell my beloved pickup truck, which had served me well on many road trips and daily commutes for eleven years, and, to replace it, bought a van that had a lot of trouble of first. I could talk about how my van was my only home for several months, during which times I drove it around the country looking to fix my life, and slept in it many times, and so on. my van actually was my only home for half of 2015. I could mention the many friendships I've lost this past year, as people who I thought I could count on seemed to fear being contaminated by my misfortunes, or were overwhelmed and helpless to the point of backing away in helpless surrender to not knowing what to do, or who left me feeling betrayed because they seemed to forget old agreements of mutual commitment and instead kicked me to the kerb. I could talk about how bitter I have felt most of 2015, bitter and abandoned and lonely and mired in self-doubt about how to move forward. I could talk about how my self-comfidence was so wroded that I ended up with panic attacks preventing me from making any decisions at all, more than once.

All of this is true. It's also just the tip of the iceberg, and I am leaving many things out. All I've listed so far are many but not all of the big pieces, and few of the daily, small, cumulative bits of suffering, bumiliation, frustration, loneliness, and sadness.

In truth I genuinely would prefer to "accentuate the positive." I am not unaware that losing everything this year leaves room to fill my life up with better people, places, experiences, and feelings. I would rather talk about how happy I was in November and December of 2015 to be on a road trip out to the Western Lands, to be making photographs as I went, to be camping in the National Parks when the weather permitted, to be making tracks in snow in the Rocky Mountains, while back in the Midwest there was an unseasonably warm winter and green lawns well into December. Indeed, being on the road for those several weeks at the end of the year were almost the only time in all of 2015 that I felt joy, or simple happiness, at all. Then there were the weeks when I housesat while I was homeless and took care of the cats and other pets for a week here, a week there, another week over there, enjoying being with the cats, and very much enjoying the restful silence and solitude while I had a roof over my head. I tried in every instance to do my best to be an excellent, responsible job at housesitting; it's something I would cheerfully do again when asked. One of the happiest times of my homeless wanderings were when I camped along on the north shore of Lake Superior in Minnesota, in August and again in September. Similarly, the times this summer and fall I was in northern Michigan were very good for the soul and body.

So, with all that as preface: truly 2015 was the worst year ever: I want to move forward into what I am grateful for, from the just-ended Year from Hell.

I am grateful to everyone who has supported me over the past year, helped me move, helped me financially, helped me organizationally, helped me out with a place to stay for a night, or for several nights, helped me keep my head together when everything was falling apart, helped me with strategy, with planning, with a thousand other small things that add up to my personal survival.

I am grateful to be alive. Some days, that's enough. Some days, it's the bare minimum I can manage.

I am beginning to comprehend what the Powers That Be seem to want me to do. I'm grateful for getting some clarity on that. I'm aware that Losing Everything also means that a door opens to freedom, for a new life to come in and replace the old, and maybe be better than the old. In moments of clarity and vision, I accept this. Sometimes I can even be happy about it. I'm grateful for insight, for intuition, and for being clever.

I mean that. I am grateful for being clever. For having been born with smarts, intelligence, and gifts. And for having had the opportunities to do something with them. My parents provided a good education. If I didn't live to everyone's expectations for my life, well, there are reasons for that. One of them is, without my knowledge, I was starting to get sick. I didn't lack ambition, I lacked the health to fulfill it. I know so much more now than I did back then. I try not to have regrets. I'm grateful for such knowledge.

I'm grateful to have survived all the bullies and assholes who have tried to knock me down, destroy my life, knock me out or over, from the day I arrived in the USA after a childhood spent in India, to last week. I am grateful not only to have survived bullying, I'm grateful to be able to make art about it. Making art is the best revenge, some wise person said, and I believe it.

I am grateful for losing everything so that void can be refilled with something new. I had a dream a few days ago in which I had been hired to go out on tour as a sound man for a famous band, one of my favorites, one I aspire to. I was the new guy, and I was about to go out on tour, so I had a lot to learn. The gist of the dream was: I need to be out on the road, doing art, making art. I need to be nomadic, more than ever, and make art. I am grateful for the dream. I am also grateful that most of the tools I need to live that lifestyle have fallen into place in the past few months.

I can't honestly say that in fact I am grateful for Losing Everything, but I'm working on it. As I said above, there are some indications that it was necessary. You don't always have to like or enjoy the way your life works out. our plans are not necessarily the real plan. I am grateful for those moments of clarity and enlightenment, regardless.

I am grateful for passion. Sometimes stubbornness is all that's kept me alive. I'm grateful for the anger that is fuel. Fuel to get things done, to move forward, to keep going. Anger is an energy. Use it. Be grateful you have the fuel, you will need it, and you will use it.

I thought about listing every name of everyone who has helped me over the past year. I still want to do that, and I also don't want to leave anyone out. So I'll postpone that in favor of general gratitude and eternal respect. More than I can say. Thank you.

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