it's nearly the end of February and I have to ask myself, who the hell blogs anymore? haha. it seems so digitally archaic and old fashioned now. the modern equivalent of a pen and quill and ink. I still do blog I guess, sporadically at best and neglectfully at worst.
This year I'll try to hit it again and a lot harder than I have in the past.
I hope you've been well and good. It's hard to believe I started this blog 12 years ago! What the hell? how does that much time pass and how much can a person change and still not really change that much at all?
I've spent the past 5 or 6 years really working on my guitar sounds only to realize I'm basically back where I started way back in the 1990's when I had a digitech DSP 21 or whatever it was called, a rack mount guitar unit and pedal I used to use on the road and in the studio. To think that I've been on the road over and recording songs and albums over 25 years is hard to fathom.
To be sure, I never got rich, but here I am nearly 50 and still not growing, I mean giving up. Youth truly is wasted on the young. haha, another thing I've come to realize as I reach half a century in age. I think it's important to find mentors and people to help you along the road and if you stumble blindly along the road, people will recognize skill and talent and implored to help you along the way. Sometimes for their benefit and sometimes for yours. Experience and time will help you define the differences between the two.
In many ways I think my best work is to come in the next ten years if I don't give up, which I'm not planning on doing anyway in the first place, so I hope this year will be full of excitement and shows and forward movement not just for myself, but for you too!
cheers,
CB.
6 comments:
Thank you for these words. It my journey through life, I have come to a point where I am returning back to school. The support that I have received from unlikely cheerleaders is what keeps me going. After reading and listening to some of your work, I truly admire the humor and resiliency that you portray in your words, art and poetry.
I am now a fan! -A
Hi Chris Loved your reading with Garry Gottfriedson & Russell Wallace/Word Vancouver
Looking forward to reading your most recent xojo
Hi Chris! I am really enjoying your storytelling and videos from the course I'm taking through Thompson Rivers University, Composition and Indigenous literature in Canada. You are an excellent story teller and artist. I look forward to watching some of your other videos. Thank you!
Kia ora Chris,
I am in TRU's ENGL 1021: Indigenous Literature and Composition course. I really enjoyed your interviews and the method of explanation of not just Indigenous storytelling, but of your own work too. Love Jesus Coyote. Nailed it!
I felt your poem 'Whale'. Literally. It hit me. Thank you for that.
It reminded me of Richard Van Camp's style a bit.
Your story about the "Mosquito Woman" was particularly intriguing. It was both an excellent story and one that reminds me of the story of 'Hatupatu and the Kurangaituku (the Birdwoman)" from Rotorua, New Zealand. I'm sure you'd like that story too!
Anyway, just wanted to say keep up the excellent work, and a huge thank you for your contribution to my learning and understanding of Canadian Indigenous perspectives.
Kia ora, Matua Chris. (Thank you, 'Father/Teacher" Chris.
Tumanako G.
Hi Chris --
After reading other people's blog posts apologizing for not updating and resolving to do better, I resolved never to apologize for not posting and not to resolve to do better. Do what you do, man, and do what you can.
And one of the things you did was write A Moon Made of Copper, which I just finished reading. I randomly came across it in the library of UC Berkeley. I liked the northwest coast cover design, so I flipped the book open and the poem I came to was the one about going to an open mic. I get it! When I was a baby poet I loved to go to readings and perform, but, boy, there was some boring shit that got read. In some sense my tolerance has grown, and in our covid shutdown days I'm pining for in-person opens.
Thanks for writing. I enjoyed the vigor and passion of your poems.
I really appreciate your "sharings," letting us dabble in the varied creations of your mind and soul. It sparked one of my dreams - for Canada to have an Indigenous prime minister - we are long overdue.
"We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all people, as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion." (D&C 121:39). The beginnings of Canada...Where was the respect for Indigenous chiefs, elders, and their people? Why couldn't we work together to create a safer, kinder, wiser world? Your photos of abandoned vehicles symbolized in my mind, the aftermath of what the White people did to Indigenous peoples - the rusting out of minds, bodies, and souls, left empty and abandoned amid the beauty of nature which nature the White people claimed to own without any respect or accountability.
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