Tuesday, March 29, 2022
Friday, March 25, 2022
Gratitude to the young people who carry the songs forward so lovingly / The holy ground took care of everything / Love waits forever
Tuesday, March 22, 2022
A timeless tree with deep roots / "Home"
Monday, March 21, 2022
"... I got lost on the river, but I got found."
Sunday, March 20, 2022
The way out is in / "A Noble Truth is a sacred creed" / Sounds of Silence / A voice from Kyiv / When the trees marched
Friday, March 18, 2022
"... Listen to the elders ..." / Douglas James (Sit ki kadem) / "O, the great sky!"
Thursday, March 17, 2022
My father loved gardening
Friday, March 11, 2022
Remembering fearless Oboe / Overcoming stage fright from the beginning / Last night's dream
Thursday, March 10, 2022
More about The Persistence of Human Beings Working Together
I mentioned a couple weeks ago how I’d been asked to volunteer my time as a subject for some budding documentary filmmakers. The short film (about 5 minutes long) they made over the course of three intense days is available for you to watch. Here are some details:
Nine talented young filmmakers came together from across the state of Montana to make this powerful short, learning the ropes of documentary filmmaking and the power of working together as a team. Students joined from Harlem, Whitefish, Ronan, St. Ignatius, Polson, and Missoula area for the 2022 Teen Doc Intensive during the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival.
I love that three of them were also from James Welch Country. Harlem, just a few miles off the Fort Belknap Reservation. The end credits, seeing all the tribes represented by these beautiful young people … it’s almost more than I can take.
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Today is Sophie's 27th Birthday With the loving persistence of her mother and others, Sophie persists.
Sophie loves the ocean.
Saturday, March 5, 2022
The Persistence of Song / The Persistence of Human Beings
Friday, March 4, 2022
"Hay ah iy ya hey iy ah hey..." / Perpetual war with rumors of peace of heart and mind
Rich man’s war
industrial streets, class lines
money talks, turning language to paper pieces
rich man's war free man's society.
Raging violent insecurity
nuclear man, nuclear woman
unclear how to act.
Rich man's war
Pershings cruising Europe.
America Russia
governmental nuclear views
industrial allies cutting the world
as though they cannot see blood flowing
Rich man's war
Central America bleeding
wounds same as Palestine and Harlem
Three Mile Island in El Salvador
Pine Ridge in Belfast
Rich man's war
the poor, starving for food
starving for land, starving for peace
starving for real.
rich man's war
attacking human, attacking being
attacking earth, attacking tomorrow
Rich man's war
thinking of always war
thinking of always war.
With machines for ancestors
new unborn generations
chemical umbilical chords are only wiring
in your electrical progress
human lives burnt offerings to the god greed
with lies for ancestors
There is no truth in some futures
rulers of minds feeding next generation's souls
to the control machine.
Sacrifice ritual for the proper technology
with isolation for ancestors
There is only the present bought by the credit material uses
forging chains binding you to destruction
compliments of your deities
the industrial priest.
Hay ah iy ya hey iy ah hey...
No more than neon flash
trying hiding in neon mask
have to face who we really are
at some point we had no choice.
Distant star distant light
In real world we are human being
in shadow of real world we are
being human.
Neon mask for neon flash.
Distant thunder distant cloud
passions reign
drenched in possession
what we take is hard to do
what we do is hard to take
some ones are crazy or maybe we take turns
dreaming about some kind of life we say
"it could have been different".
But it wasn't because we weren't
no matter what, it turns out the same
a lot of things we said weren't true
industrial stories in an electric instant
neon mask neon flash neon flash.
Thing is nihilistic desires
civilized gone insane
didn't imagine it turning like this
some things start good and go bad
some things get bad and stay bad.
Are we caught in between living a lie or
not living at all?
Eliminated choices lost in dreams we let go
memories we never got to have
something else to think about...
Waking up in industrial society
surrounded by angry days
going through motions
of not being.
Wanting the best but not expecting it.
Surviving paid for in dreams
feeling like a world alone
serving god with the devil to pay.
Feeling like something in no place
what goes on in hell anyway?
Thing is, it has to do with heart.
we have to understand what hearts are for
before we can get back to heaven or paradise
or the power in our mind.
Hay ah iy a hey e ya hay...
Thursday, March 3, 2022
"Sunrise"
"Sunrise," by Joy Harjo, read by Chris La Tray
JOY HARJO
Sunrise
Sunrise, as you enter the houses of everyone here, find us.
We've been crashing for days, or has it been years.
Find us, beneath the shadow of this yearning mountain, crying here.
We have been sick with sour longing, and the jangling of fears.
Our spirits rise up in the dark, because they hear,
Doves in cottonwoods calling forth the sun.
We struggled with a monster and lost.
Our bodies were tossed in the pile of kill. We rotted there.
We were ashamed and we told ourselves for a thousand years,
We didn't deserve anything but this—
And one day, in relentless eternity, our spirits discerned movement of prayers
Carried toward the sun.
And this morning we are able to stand with all the rest
And welcome you here.
We move with the lightness of being, and we will go
Where there's a place for us.
Wednesday, March 2, 2022
Concurrence
Tuesday, March 1, 2022
Song and poetry for a dark time as spring comes again
The holy dove, she will be caught again
Bought and sold, and bought again
The dove is never free
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in