Getting Sandpointed: A Conversation with Jackie Henrion

 

Getting Sandpointed: A Conversation with Jackie Henrion

 

KIRPAL GORDON: Reading the poetry collection, Sandpointed, I wonder if the community in Sandpoint, Idaho, knows you from your weekly radio broadcast you host and curate, “Songs-Voices-Poems,” every Sunday at 7 PM on KRFY 88.5? I ask because the book is like an extension of your radio show! What also knocked me out is this back cover blurb from the town mayor’s wife Katie Greenland: “Sandpointed is a wise women’s collective weaving of place, presence, and possibility. At once a portrait of sassy poetics, a song of seasonal survivance, and a recipe for medicinal brew sure to tantalize any literary appetite. Written by a royal flush of witty and playful writers well-versed in lettered seduction. A soul-nourishing read.” Quite skillful of you and your writing group to get your town represented in the arts!

 

JACKIE HENRION: We were thrilled to have her endorsement. Katie and her husband, Shelby Rognstad, are not only supporters of the arts but they are courageous thought leaders, and devoted parents to their two children. As part of her doctorate studies in Leadership from Gonzaga, she now conducts presentations and workshops around the world about the power of women’s stories. In fact, the other endorsements at the front of the book are from a number of potent women in the Sandpoint arts community: Carol Deaner from the Pend Oreille Arts Council, Karin Wedemeyer, founder of the Sandpoint Music Conservatory and Suzy Prez, Manager of 88.5 KRFY.

 

KIRPAL GORDON: It appears this group has a long history. Why did you decide to publish a book now?

 

JACKIE HENRION: With covid restrictions and shutdowns, the women of the Sandpoint Monday Writers decided we would stop meeting for a while. Our long-term meeting place, Foster’s Crossing, an artistically quirky antique mall and restaurant, closed. We missed each other. We also missed the weekly practice: writing extemporaneously to prompts, witnessing our feelings, and giving wings to our creativity. In 2022, we decided to reinstate the meetings at the new Monarch Mountain Coffee, recently relocated to the heart of downtown Sandpoint. The book honors the writing process and this moment in time—our moment in time when women’s voices are at the crest of a cultural tsunami.

 

Jackie Henrion, Rhoda Sanford, Sandy Lamson, Robens Napolitan, Desiree Aguirre, Sandra Rasor

KIRPAL GORDON: Cultural tsunami? How so?

 

JACKIE HENRION: The most evident tsunami is that of high-profile figures held to account for their abuse of power for sexual ends. Women are challenging traditions around the globe, most evidently in the Middle East, on the African continent, and in France. During the covid shutdowns we had more time to reflect how human culture is changing in many related ways. For example, younger generations are showing us how to be more fluid in our identities, our jobs, and our families. In over a decade of Monday morning writing sessions, we also see changes in our language. We have matured in our perspective, occupying more space and holding the interspace for other women; less judgmental and more nuanced in our observations. Not just about poetic details but about ourselves. In a way, we are more forgiving of our formative conditions. Aging together makes us laugh more about our hair color, weight, families, memory lapses, and pets. Sandy Lamson’s piece, “The Oldest Bike,” is evocative in this way: ...“it leans against the wall to witness everything going on. The oldest bike in Sandpoint is envious; the last time it tried to see and hear everything, someone pushed it outside, where it fell into a crumpled heap from which it could not extricate itself without assistance. It was very embarrassing.”

 

KIRPAL GORDON: How did you discover or decide on the title Sandpointed?

 

JACKIE HENRION: We stretched the town’s name to a descriptive term to increase its stickiness. If you know a little about the literary history of the Northwest, you will have heard of Richard Hugo, the revered poetry professor at Montana State Bozeman, memorialized by the Hugo House in Seattle. He wrote a book called The Triggering Town, about his poetic philosophy. The resultant dominant cultural legacy from Seattle’s University of Washington out to the plains of Montana, is place-based. Certainly in Sandpoint, our creative language can’t help but include the geography, such as my poem “Lake This.”

“The lake exudes a tufted sailing regatta, lofted

Scrims wafting, floating, coasting along

The viscous surface about to be ice.

Like tall ships and small craft, drifting in the Northward breeze

Stately procession, over immobilized waves. Ducks

Dive, punctuating the edge of the crust periodically, Purposefully."

 

Or Desiree’s story about Marburl, the lone post-apocalyptic figure who accumulates family on his way to the remembered safety of Sandpoint. In this way one can see Sandpoint as an enclave of hope where men and women can navigate new streams from their regional cultural lineage.

 

KIRPAL GORDON: The reputation of North Idaho and the extremist community called the American Redoubt movement have grabbed headlines in the recent past.

 

JACKIE HENRION: They are a noisy minority. But our group chooses to focus instead on authentic experiences and communal sensibilities. This book amplifies our shared experiences. We wish to become louder, inspire others. We write about this place and the paradox and diversity of viewpoints found here. We embrace them all. Writing our first and best thoughts, reading them to each other, and acknowledging each other happens quietly, yet profoundly, every week.

 

KIRPAL GORDON: Does the Sandpoint community know that you received your MFA degree from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University? I ask because your poetry project reflects a commitment to make community wherever you are, which the original JKSDP program directors, Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman, powerfully espoused. How did your degree from Naropa affect this project?

 

JACKIE HENRION: Although my work at Naropa influenced my language, our writing group uses the concepts through osmosis. At Naropa, I experimented with writing tools that helped me rise above cliches and think more poetically from Eleni Sikelianos. I also learned much about women’s writing and philosophy in Gabrielle Civil's class, discovering my lineage of the interspace and bridging through Dickinson, Anzaldúa, Perloff, and others. From Anne Waldman, I learned how politics begins and ends with personal sensations. But more than anything, I absorbed the value of continuing focus and energy: The “vow to poetry,” Anne describes. To learn the fundamentals of eloquent expression, then to value it enough to go to print, is a kind of sacred rite. As a result, it has been a delight to work with Laura Wahl at Turtlemoon Publishing, whose underlying mission is to publish women's stories and work. My MFA from Naropa helped me navigate the curating, editing, publishing, and marketing arenas more confidently. But all this knowledge fits within my parallel study of meditation and mind.

 

KIRPAL GORDON: Can you say more about your study of mind?

 

JACKIE HENRION: Before I went to Naropa, I had experience with meditation, and my undergraduate degree was in psychology. Then I encountered the work of psychologist Daniel J. Siegel. His concepts provide a framework and tools to integrate all of this knowledge in a helpful way for writing. I will mention only two here. His “wheel of awareness” describes four areas of insight critical to growth: the five senses, sensory awareness of subtle internal body processes, our thoughts and emotions, and finally, interpersonal dynamics. We can rise above the conventional when writers integrate language in these areas.

            The second is what I see as original innocence. When we start to discover ourselves through writing, we are more compassionate if we understand that we, and others, are formed from our DNA and circumstances. We learn how to survive through our formative environments.  For example, Robens’ poem, “Where God Lives,” is a poignant artifact of her upbringing as a minister's daughter.

“In my palms, the heat of suppressed youth

pulsed and ran up past the restricting cuffs

of my Sunday dress into my restless arms.”

 

When we become more self-aware through these writing processes, we learn that we can choose our actions and words differently with a focus of attention. Then our writing can take wings poetically. Our resultant growth and integration and provides something valuable for readers.

 

 

KIRPAL GORDON: How do you see that shaking out for readers of Sandpointed?

 

JACKIE HENRION: I see it as a kind of chamber music. The unique thing we have found through the group is a resonance of words and concepts. We achieve this resonance through one of our processes: collecting a list of words during the month which we use directly or for inspiration. In our writing, you can hear a repetition or echo in the finished pieces. Like the first poem by Desiree Aguirre mentions porcupines, so does one of my poems. You will also encounter some “recipes” from different writers. These repetitions are random and individually filtered yet pull the work together: a collection of “Wild Minds” at work. Like music, it takes time to absorb the vibrational qualities. Rhoda's Sanford's last poem in the book, “Give It Some Time,” is an apt invocation:

“...savor the taste,

feel the richness.

Relax into the pungent whisper of fulfillment.”

 

 Hopefully, it will inspire people to take this home and start writing groups of their own. It can be transformative---in the most subtle and fundamental ways.

 

KIRPAL GORDON: How can readers find the book?

 

JACKIE HENRION: It’s available on Amazon as well as in local shops (https://a.co/d/9o0OHWh). Many come to Sandpoint to enjoy skiing, the lake amenities, hunting, fishing, and scenery. But this book is a gift to yourself or someone else about real people who live here, their interior landscape, their hopes for growth, and ultimately their courage to share their work.

 

Learning How to Work GSP’s Design-Your-Own Internship by Chelsea DeBarros

 

My first day of Composition class as a college freshman was unforgettable. I walked into the classroom, saw the desks arranged in a circle, sat down, and realized I could see everyone and everyone could see me. My preference for sitting behind another person and remaining invisible was challenged. "This class is not for the weak or the half-steppers! You must develop people skills, learn to participate, share your thoughts, edit each other's work and take charge of our discussions. If it's not for you, drop this class and add a different section. That way, you won't hold up the rest of us," Kirpal Gordon said. I was so taken aback that I questioned if college was for me.
 
After deciding to not let fear choose my destiny, I stayed in the class. However, I wondered if I had made the right decision after receiving the grade for my first essay. The assignment was to interview my designated partner and write about their value to our class. It seemed self-explanatory and not too demanding. I interviewed my partner outside of class, got all of the intricate details on their life, and wrote what I thought was an A-worthy paper. I got back a C. How could I do this badly? What did I do wrong? Why didn't I bolt out the door like some of the others? The grade drove me mad, and I had to address KP.

I made an appointment to meet with him to review my paper. I was nervous but stood my ground that my paper deserved a better grade. I read it aloud, and we discussed my content and strategy. I started to see his perspective and what my writing lacked. Instead of reciting facts about my classmate, I should have recorded what made them unique and an asset to me. I had not included my own experience of my interviewee, which was a missed opportunity. I needed to break free from my high-school way of writing as reportage and get in tune with writing as a persuasive discourse. Per KP's suggestion, I decided to utilize the writing center.

I worked with tutors for other essays and walked away with something new from each session. By the end of the semester, I had gained in-depth skills in outlining and drafting, editing, formulating thoughts and ideas, and using proper grammar and punctuation. In addition, the multiple revisions of my work that I brought to the writing center started paying off. In all of my classes, my essay grades improved, and to this day, I have not received a C back in any of my college papers.

KP noticed an improvement in my writing. When the semester ended, he invited me to bring my essay, "Equal Opportunity: This Campus Was Made for You and Me," to the writing center. After many discussions and iterations of the work, I was finally happy with it. Once it was published at the Taking Giant Steps Press blog, the essay opened numerous doors for me. I became a proud member of the Commuter Student Association and have continued to be a commuter peer mentor for the last two years. Moreover, I had found my writing voice.

source: https://www.britannica.com/place/Guyana

In my sophomore year, I interviewed a Guyanese family in my community for my research project in Anthropology class. After leaving Guyana for different reasons, the family has been living with undocumented status in the United States for over 15 years. As I spoke with them, I was amazed at how much the stories they were telling me were similar to the lessons I learned in the American history books like self-reliance, independence, ingenuity, and fortitude. To make matters more interesting, one of the couples had an American-born child. We discussed the identity struggles that she battles with, being the family member furthest from her ancestors in India and Africa and her parent's homeland of Guyana. I was so heavily impacted by this family that I asked to share their story. With their permission to write a book on their experiences, I met with KP in the hallway of the writing center and gave him a quick rundown of what occurred with this family. Then, I asked him if he thought I could use my research to develop a non-fiction book. Without hesitation, KP suggested Giant Steps Press and offered to assist me in writing the book.

 
I was nervous and second-guessed myself. However, my doubts subsided after KP slowly introduced me to the world of book writing. First, he showed me how to shape a rough outline into a three-act narrative. Then he shared with me how writers pitch their projects in a one-sentence summary, one-paragraph summary, and one-page summary. Like with my essays in the writing center, KP and I discussed my pitches until I was satisfied. Then we moved on to filling in the outline, creating character profiles, and fine-tuning the plot. Meanwhile, I read manuscripts that were in development at Giant Steps Press. I saw how they improved from one version to another.

KP invited me to extend my research and to contact scholars whose work could help inform my story. My confidence grew. Our conversations now included post-colonialism in the Caribbean, the works of V.S. Naipaul, the emergence of Little Guyana in South Queens, and the challenges my generation faced with dual identities. I began to see my book project as a way to build community and my future career. He mentioned the value of incorporating social media and introduced me to Emily Rivera, a Hofstra graduate building her career through her internship with GSP. She is currently the public relations consultant to the press and helped me create and curate Backtrack Journeys, my blog that celebrates my writing adventure on the undocumented Guyanese in Little Guyana. A skilled photographer and copywriter, Emily showed me how to use text and images to create a post that intrigues and informs. She had also been apprenticing with Steve Hirsch, a technical wizard at GSP, and had just learned how to format an index and an appendix. I will need to use these two elements in my book, and Emily offered to train me in these skills.

Kaieteur-Falls-Guyana
source: https://www.britannica.com/place/Guyana

Since my internship is something that I am creating, I choose the things that I want to do. This freedom has allowed me to continue thriving in other parts of my life. As a full-time student at Hofstra University majoring in Criminology and Sociology with an Anthropology minor, I get to adjust the workload based on my schedule. I am grateful for this because I don't have to make sacrifices to my work that will impact my education.

Looking back on the day I met KP, I am glad to not have left his class in favor of an "easy-A" class because I experienced the benefits of persistence and hard work, which led me to develop my writing voice. And once I used my writing voice to publish my first essay, opportunities welcomed me. All those moments led up to today, where I find myself as a senior in a spot I didn't know was possible. I am authoring a book that celebrates my own heritage. 

 

Peter Cherches discusses Tracks: Memoirs from a Life with Music, a new chapbook, with interviewer Kirpal Gordon

author Peter Cherches; photo credit: Elder Zamora

KIRPAL GORDON: Pete, since we last talked on the release of your book Lift Your Right Arm in November, 2013 (Taking Giant Steps: PETER CHERCHES: AN INTERVIEW WITH AN ULTRA-MINIMALIST (giantstepspress.blogspot.com), you've published two more books with Pelekinesis: Autobiography Without Words, a collection of short tongue-in-cheek vignettes from your Brooklyn childhood, and Whistler's Mother's Son, a collection of even shorter meta-fictive pieces. Both exemplify what Publishers Weekly noted about your work, namely that you are “one of the innovators of the short short story.” So what's going on in your new chapbook, Tracks: Memoirs from a Life with Music? 

 

 

PETER CHERCHES: Since you mentioned Autobiography Without Words, I’ll start there. I really hadn’t written much personal stuff for much of my writing career, and what little I did was thickly disguised. When I started food blogging in 2006, after a long hiatus (nearly 15 years) from writing (well, if you don't include a doctoral dissertation), I started writing about early food memories, and that led to more in the memoir form, and many of those pieces became part of that book. At the beginning of last year, just before Whistler’s Mother’s Son was about to be published, I started to think about a next writing project, possibly a break from fiction. Around that time I remembered poet Al Young’s series of musical memoirs, which I had read some years ago. I decided that would be fertile ground for me. I’d written a little about music before, but very little considering how central music has been to my life both as a listener and a performer. I wanted to make something personal of music, talk about the music that was the soundtrack to different times and ages, and animate in words the way that music becomes part of the fabric of our lives. I was able to write a lot in a pretty short period of time, especially after I was furloughed from my day job. I actually came up with enough for a full-length book, but I wasn’t satisfied enough with much of what I had written. I felt some of the pieces were forced, some redundant, and a number too descriptive of the music without enough of the personal connection. Then, last fall, Mark Givens, my publisher at Pelekinesis, announced that he was starting a new chapbook press, a joint venture with Dennis Callaci, the owner of the indie record label Shrimper. They were talking about doing books of 25 to 50 pages. I approached Mark with the proposal to do a selected group of musical memoirs, and he liked the idea. So I went through my manuscript, choose the pieces that were the strongest in different ways, about the joy of discovery, the sustenance of enthusiasms, and appreciation of the artists whose work becomes part of us. A few of the entries were adapted from tributes I had written to individual musicians, and some were the result of merging two pieces that really were talking about the same thing. Bamboo Dart Press decided to publish the book, though it broke their original length limit and ended up at about 65 pages.

 

KIRPAL GORDON: I noticed on the Contents page a series of links. For the technically challenged like myself, can you explain how to find your blog and the play list of tunes and the specific version that relates to each vignette?

 

PETER CHERCHES: The URL to the blog, where the playlists are hosted, is https://cherches-tracks.blogspot.com/. There are Spotify and YouTube playlists in the right sidebar of the page with recordings of all the songs that form the individual section titles in the book. It's a little different on a phone, and that's explained in the informational post. I figured that with the technology that's available it would be nice to have an easy reference for readers who want to hear the music. The Spotify playlist is called Peter Cherches: Tracks, so one could also search for that directly on Spotify.

 

KIRPAL GORDON: Regarding your phrase “joy of discovery,” it’s all over this memoir. As you make clear in your opening pieces, your two brothers—how many years apart?—were a great aid to the discovery process. Come on, now: you open with the Beatles’ “I Want to Hold Your Hand” when you are eight years old, jump “Milestones” with that first great Miles Davis band and then it’s the Fillmore East and Mountain’s masterpiece cover of the Jack Bruce-Pete Brown epic “Theme for an Imaginary Western” with that great vocal from Felix Pappalardi.

 

It’s not just that you have a wide-open ear; your discovery process is contagious. I followed your directions and played every song as I read the piece. What a find: Oliver Nelson’s “Stolen Moments” with bop lyrics (I didn’t know!). You’ve penned quite a moving tribute to Mark Murphy as “the quintessential jazz singer.”

 

PETER CHERCHES: "Contagious" is a word I like! 

 

My oldest brother, who was a true mentor, was 12 years my senior. My other brother, whose tastes are rather pedestrian, is eight years older. Our father died when I was two, so my brothers kind of filled in the gaps.

 

I decided to sequence the pieces chronologically according to when the songs made their impact on me, so the earlier pieces lean toward those big discoveries, whole bodies of music (e.g., my intro to classic blues via blues-rock), and the later ones become more specialized as my listening becomes more broadly informed. Then, right at the end I return to childhood, because I wanted to go out with the warm memory of my grandparents and my first exposure to Billie Holiday. The penultimate piece in the book, "Turn! Turn! Turn!," is the last one I wrote, and I used the refrain, "To everything there is a season," as a fulcrum to get back to childhood after talking about my long hiatus from writing and performance.

 

I used the Murphy piece to both pay tribute to him and to talk about jazz singing from my dual perspective as listener and singer. He wrote a number of original lyrics to jazz standards, by the way. Freddie Hubbard's "Red Clay" is another one. Murphy is a hero, but he's Dionysian to my Apollonian. If I wanted to write about a more subdued hero, I could have chosen Bill Henderson, who for me is the king of understated swing.

 

 

KIRPAL GORDON: Regarding your brothers, the older as a Rat Pack lover and Great American Songbook fan and the younger “whose tastes are rather pedestrian,” Tracks reveals you as a synthesizer of highbrow and low, listener of popular and avant-garde. It reads to me like you are seeking the authentic, the true and the original. Even when you’re turned on to blues performed by rock guys, your predilection is toward the existential and the roots lovers (Johnny Winter, for example, rather than Alvin Lee). Your “sustenance of enthusiasm and appreciation of the artists whose work becomes part of us,” as you phrased it, has everything to do with your long love affair with the music. You got it bad, and that’s great for the reader.

 

You really celebrate New York City, too. Hank Williams in a Park Slope bar’s jukebox! Your report on Rivbea is one of the most impressive appreciations of the Loft Era and where Sam Rivers was taking the music. Likewise, your eye on Butch Morris and his Conductions. You catch Steve Lacy with Mal Waldron. Most evocative of the best of the Big Apple.

 

 

PETER CHERCHES: I'm not the type who fetishizes the "authentic," but I'm interested in roots, connections, and directions, so I always want to find what's behind something that strikes me. For instance, I came to Brazilian music through bossa nova, and MPB artists like Milton Nascimento, but when I'd see them covering an old samba by Noel Rosa or Dorival Caymmi, I wanted to know the originals. I'm one of those people who has to know all the sidemen on the record, and who else they performed with.

 

I'm very proud of the piece on Rivbea. There are other reports on the music, but I think I gave a feeling of what it was like to be in the audience. I wrote a version of the Butch Morris piece on my blog the day I learned he passed away, and adapted it a bit. Add Lacy and I think you've got an interesting trio of "representative men" of avant-garde jazz.

 

 

KIRPAL GORDON: Tracks has you literally traveling the world in search of music. You flew to London to check out Brazilian music at the Royal Albert Hall. In search of samba you travelled to the city of Salvador in Bahia. What were your other stops in Brazil? Did you get to the opera house in Manaus? In India you’re searching for cassette tapes of U. Srinavas, the prodigy who would later work with John McLaughlin in Shakti, and in Moscow you’re listening to “Feelings.” You make pilgrimage to Memphis, Tennessee, but it’s to the W.C. Handy Museum, not Graceland.

 

 

PETER CHERCHES: I didn't get anywhere near Manaus. In Brazil I was mostly in Rio and Salvador, with a short visit to Ouro Preto, the historic gold town in Minas Gerais (Milton Nascimento's home state). I didn't actually search for U. Srinivas, he was recommended to me by a guy in a little cassette shop: "Only 12 years old!" This was well before he started working with John McLaughlin, and I eventually saw Remember Shakti in Montreal.

 

 

KIRPAL GORDON: The other killer ingredient in the memoir is the inside dope on the music’s composers, performers and venues as well as observations cultural, historical and personal. I’m glad you brought up your fantasia on your grandparents listening to Lady Day’s “I Cover the Waterfront” on their old Victrola. It’s the Gestalt-ing of the personal remembrance in the context of Billie Holiday’s unique genius that makes the vignette so poignant.

 

 

PETER CHERCHES:  I've always been a voracious reader of music history and biography, so I have that kind of info at the ready, but I still do research to check my own facts. As far as your observation on the Billie Holiday piece, that's exactly why I ended with it. I think it came together nicely to make a full circle back to childhood. 

 

 

KIRPAL GORDON: Having been there, I am particularly fascinated by your incident at Epidaurus, the ancient healing center of Aesculapius, where it is said that the cure for illness can be found in the contemplation of the beautiful. It sounds as if you took quite a giant step. Here's the entire piece called “Thelonious Monk, ‘Blue Monk’ (1952),” followed by a clip of you singing the tune in question:

 

            In college I was working toward becoming a playwright, studying with Jack Gelber, best known for the play The Connection. Most of my literature courses were in drama, from the English, Comparative Literature, and Classics departments, and I took a number of courses in the Theatre department too. My professor for history of theatre was Benito Ortolani, a scholar of classical Japanese theatre, with a secondary focus on Western antiquity. Ortolani was as Italian as they come. He had a thick accent and his hands were in constant motion. One day a student asked him, “Professor Ortolani, how many languages do you speak?” He replied, “Seven living-a ones and two dead-a ones.” In Ortolani’s class I learned about the surviving ancient Greek theatre at Epidaurus, a magical place that since then had always had a bookmark in my brain.

            It was close to 40 years later that I finally got to Greece. From Nafplio, a beautiful coastal city on The Peloponnese, I took a tour to Epidaurus.

            The theatre was built at the end of the 4th Century BCE, not long after the death of Euripides, whose plays were surely performed there, along with those of Aeschylus and Sophocles. It’s famous for its acoustics, a marvel of ancient engineering. Our tour guide pointed out that if you stand in the center, at ground level, and speak at a normal conversational volume, your words will be heard in even the highest, furthest seats—and the theatre seats about 14,000 spectators. “Try it,” she told us. A couple of people went down and spoke a few words. What was I going to do? Here I was at a veritable shrine of the theatre world, long a destination of desire for me; I certainly wasn’t going to say something banal like, “Hello, everybody!” Then I had a brainstorm.

            My life in the arts has taken a number of twists and turns. By my senior year in college, it became clear to me that short fiction, rather than drama, was my true métier as a writer. By the early eighties I was doing what people were calling performance art, mostly monologues based on my own texts. Then I started working with musicians, and that inspired me to get serious about singing, so I studied for about five years with a fabulous jazz singer, Nanette Natal. In 1987 I did my first concert as a jazz singer, at the New York alternative music space Roulette. For the show, I had written lyrics for 18 of Thelonious Monk’s compositions. Now I’d take the opportunity to consecrate Epidaurus with the music of Thelonious Monk. 

            So when my turn came I started singing my lyrics to “Blue Monk.” I had finished one chorus when a security guard came up to me, sternly wagging her finger, saying, “No singing!” I stopped, but I should have said, “And what the hell do you think the Greek chorus did?”

            I tell people that singing Monk at Epidaurus was the closest thing this atheist Jew has ever had to a “spiritual” experience. I hadn’t really sung for close to 20 years, and this inspired me to get back in the game.

Blue Monk, Cornelia Street Cafe, March 13, 2016 - YouTube

 

PETER CHERCHES: My visit to Epidaurus was both a fulfillment of an old dream and an unexpected renewal, and from there I returned to childhood!

 

 

KIRPAL GORDON: For me the strongest combination of song and tale is Anton Webern’s “Six Bagatelles for String Quartet (Op. 9).” I had my own wacky Gestalt moment. As the composition played on YouTube, I read your praise of Webern’s restraint and reliance on silence. I started to experience the music differently. My ears stopped efforting, and the “silent sections” filled in the “musical sections.” Then I read Schoenberg’s response to “Six Bagatelles” and realized it’s an Ars Poetica for Tracks: “Consider what moderation is required to express oneself so briefly. Every glance can be expanded into a poem, every sigh into a novel. But to express a novel in a single gesture, joy in a single breath—such concentration can only be present when there is a corresponding absence of self-indulgence.”

 

 

PETER CHERCHES: I think it might be the longest piece in the book, but I'm nonetheless pleased by how much I was able to squeeze into it. It may be my most fully formed exposition of my own working methods and concerns, at least regarding the influence of work in the other arts. As far as moderation is concerned, that's why the book is 65 pages instead of 200!

 

Tracks is available from Bamboo Dart Press at https://www.bamboodartpress.com/store/peter_cherches-tracks_memoirs_from_a_life_with_music.html

Peter Cherches w/ mic, Dave Hofstra on bass; photo credit: Scott Friedlander

GSP Announces Publication of William Seaton's Planetary Motions

 

(Freeport, NY) Giant Steps Press is pleased to announce the publication

of Planetary Motions, a new book of poetry from Hudson Valley writer William Seaton. The volume includes lyrics written since the author’s last collection Spoor of Desire as well as Seaton’s sound poems, which he calls “adult nursery rhymes,” and translations from German, Greek, Latin, and French. In the foreword Seaton describes his works as “snapshots of consciousness reflecting glints of shattered truth which I wave in the dark like a blessedly naïve child with a sparkler.” 

In advance reviews Kirpal Gordon praised “the music these poems make and the momentum they create” with a “just-so-ness of phrase and sound.”  Steve Hirsch said Seaton reveals “new heart-treasure and insight into who we are.”  For Janet Hamill “he establishes an elegant pattern with this kaleidoscope of words.” 

Seaton has long been active in the Hudson Valley poetry scene.  He ran the Poetry on the Loose Reading/Performance Series, co-founded the Northeast Poetry Center and taught in its College of Poetry, and worked with the Seligmann Center for the Arts, producing numerous artistic and scholarly events including the Surreal Cabarets of performance art.  He maintains a “largely literary” blog at williamseaton.blogspot.com.

The book is available from Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08MS5KNJB/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=seaton+planetary+motions&s=books&sr=1-1.  

Founded in 2011, Giant Steps is a small New York City press named in tribute to the classic John Coltrane album, specializing in publishing books on jazz and jazz-influenced poets. 

BLM/Independence Day: Drummer Warren Smith Reflects on Growing up on Chicago's South Side in the 1930s

KIRPAL GORDON: I had a peek at the memoir you are writing on your life in music. On Independence Day during this national moment of Black Lives Mattering, would you share some of your experiences coming up in Chicago?

WARREN SMITH: At the time of my birth (5/14/1934), Black people lived south of 12^th Street. Chicago was fast, hip, intense---whatever was in style at the time. There was music, dance, theater, opera, night clubs, blues joints, jam sessions. Prohibition had just been rescinded, and now marijuana was illegal. I remember my father, a musician, putting on his tuxedo and tying his bow tie to go to work at the establishment whatever it was (sometimes the establishment was run by gangsters like Al Capone). Here it was right after the Depression, and everyone dressed up formally to go to work. It never occurred to me at that time to ask, who covered the costs of all that production?

We lived south of the Loop between 12^th Street and 31^st Street next to the Lakefront. The real estate phenomena that continually occurred when Black residents moved across that line resulted in their getting harassed and/or vandalized initially. Then there would be a “White Flight” as the Caucasian residents moved further south to avoid integrating with Black folks. The family rumor has it that our Uncle Steele and Uncle Lloyd had bought a house on 37^th Street and Ellis Avenue, in which several of our families were living along with our paternal grandfather, James Madison Smith. Someone set off a bomb in front of the house and blew out most of the windows. My younger brother Frank and I were untouched, but there was glass embedded in the wall above our crib. Our grandfather died not long after, certainly not helped by the experience. Other cousins and friends had similar experiences as we gradually expanded further south, but eventually the violence stopped, at least the physical violence. Until I left for New York in 1957, not much had changed. But things are quite different now for our next generation of cousins, at least geographically, as far as I know. I don’t live there anymore; I’m going on hearsay.

The important point I want to make is that this segregated segment of Chicago society felt completely empowered and pretty much self-sufficient. We had our own school system with Black superintendents, principals and associate principals. For context, let me add that I started teaching in “integrated” New York City in 1958. They got their first Black principal in 1966.

We had our own Musicians Union, with its own Credit Union. The first building it owned was on State Street at 40^th Street. When urban renewal caused that whole neighborhood to be raised, the Union bought another on Cottage Grove and 61^st Street. And they owned an apartment on Drexel Blvd in Hyde Park which afforded many of its members an affordable home during trying times. Many of these resources were lost to us when the AF of M integrated Local 208 with the White Union Local 10 becoming the present Local 10-208. Chicago’s South Side, however, has retained its power as a thriving black community. And it was so much that way during my youth that I almost never ventured outside of it except to go to school. I joined the Musicians Union at the age of 14 and got my driver’s license as well. I didn’t realize there was a Local 10 until I was 21. I was playing music in church, in social affairs, in parades and summer concert bands. 

KIRPAL GORDON: You also lived in Maywood? How did that move come about?

WARREN SMITH: Moms did not like the environment around A.O. Sexton Grade School, so in my second year my brother Frank and I transferred to Washington Grade School in the mostly Black school in District 89, Maywood, Illinois, where my maternal grandparents lived, some twenty miles due west of the Loop. Chicago’s South Side was completely urban and paved with asphalt, but Maywood had cobblestone streets.  We lived in a big two-story house with a basement, large side yard and a back yard that featured a vegetable garden cultivated mostly by my father, produce we ate daily. There were cherry trees, a rhubarb bush, currants and my grandfather’s herb garden with mint and other medicinal plants. We had a well from which we drew water daily and a rain barrel for utilitarian purposes. We raised chickens.

Maywood was just west of Oak Park/River Forest, a rather affluent area with many Frank Lloyd Wright Prairie houses in the residential neighborhoods. Maywood went from 1^st Avenue in the east to 26^th Avenue in the west and from St. Charles Road on the north to Madison Avenue on the south. All the Black people in the town lived between 10^th and 14th Avenues. One wealthy businessman owned a nice home on the corner of 15^th and Oak Street. The renowned scientist Dr. Percy Julian lived on the corner of 14^th and Oak. A few years later Dr. Julian had the temerity to move to Oak Park itself, and of course his house got bombed in true Chicago style.

Now here’s where fate gets tricky. During the Second World War the common thread of thought was that Black men weren’t courageous enough to go into serious battle with the “enemy.” So all the Black soldiers from Maywood were sent out as orderlies, cooks and other non-combat duties. A battalion of soldiers containing all the White enlistees from Maywood was sent to the Pacific where they were wiped out by Japanese forces in the battle of Bataan. There was a Hollywood movie, starring John Wayne, made years later by that name. All the Black soldiers came back from the war and the town turned BLACK within that generation.

When we started school in Maywood, during the first week we had to fight our way back to our grandparents’ house every day after school, until the neighborhood kids got to know we were “Mr. Derrick’s grandkids.” Then we began to make friends that lasted for a lifetime. And we had lots of cousins from my mother’s side of the family. We all went through grade school together and high school as well. Most of our parents also had attended the same school before us.  

KIRPAL GORDON: Would you take a chorus on your family’s “pilgrimages” to North Carolina?

WARREN SMITH: Yes, but first here's the background: My mother had an older sister and a younger brother; my father had ten siblings. I never saw them all, but the ones present in my life were very influential. All my role models were organically related to me. I grew up with my younger brother and more than a dozen first, second or third cousins. They were all like brothers and sisters. We lived together, often ate together, slept together and frequently traveled together from Chicago to North Carolina to visit the Smith family homestead. I guess that was James Madison Smiths’ 40 Acres, and there was a mule involved also. In North Carolina we also raised pigs and grew peanuts. We could walk down the red dirt road in the morning and pick wild berries and fruit from the trees and bushes for our breakfast. Sometimes my brother, my cousin Ethan and I would bring back enough blue berries for our aunts to make a couple of pies. We’d go fishing and cook outside in a big kettle over an open fire. Both sides of the family preserved canned fruit and vegetables for the winter. We made wine from fruit or even dandelion flowers! We cooked the dandelion leaves as greens or used them in salads. Very little was wasted in those days.

The trips to North Carolina took several days. We would leave Chicago with enough food to last us until we got to Washington D.C. In the 1930s and 40s we didn’t know where we might or might not get served or abused so we drove straight through to where we knew it was safe. In D.C. we had relatives. We’d spend the night, re-supply our food bank and drive the last five or six hours to the homestead. After a week or two we would all pile back into the two or three car caravan and travel back to Chicago the same way. We did this annually until our grandmother died at 103. Now we occasionally return for periodic reunions or meet at some other hosting location every few years. Somehow the tradition is still intact.

KIRPAL GORDON: You were born into quite a musical family. What was that like?

WARREN SMITH: My dad played saxophone and clarinet; my mother played piano and harp. Literally every one of our aunts and uncles were musicians and were always preparing to perform somewhere. Often even as infants we went along with them, to drop them off or pick them up and sometimes even allowed to come inside and see what was going on. This was live theater with full orchestras, dancers, singers and stage lighting. You can’t imagine how early this captured my imagination. I had decided to be a professional musician by the time I was three!

One of the most exciting times was when one of the bands was getting ready to go on the road. Maybe they had a three-week engagement in Detroit or six weeks in Buffalo. The morning of their departure, women would be cooking and preparing bags of food. There would be three or four cars lined up at the curb, all being cleaned and simonized, the white walled tires painted with white wash, a water-based paint. Then the musicians would appear, each one dressed stylishly and sharper than the last. Finally, after all the loved ones got their hugs and kisses and the food bags were distributed in all the cars, the motors would start up and they’d be off to cheers from the crowd. Boy, how the young kids longed to go with them. We couldn’t wait for them to come home and tell all the funny stories and strange adventures they had experienced.

Every once in a while, one of our special talents would get the opportunity to go to New York City, Harlem. Almost all the aspiring musicians from Chicago wanted to follow the footsteps of their musical idols to the Big Apple. As Black kids our idols were entertainers, the few professional athletes who managed to break through like Jack Johnson Joe Lewis or “Sugar Ray” Robinson, and the doctors, lawyers, and educators from our neighborhoods. Our families probably had a lot more power and influence over their lives than we do now. We certainly didn’t have as much then, but it wasn’t necessary either.

I started trying to play my Dad’s saxophone at around four. In a couple of years I could play what I could think of (not much) by ear. Being precocious, actually arrogant, I thought I knew more than I actually did. I began to tinker around with the piano, by ear. My mother and no fewer than three aunts had degrees in piano and organ, but I never thought to consult them at all. I just did it by ear and my folks were wise enough to let me find my own way. Then one day at about six I went into a ballroom called the “Rum Boogie” with my mother and brother to pick up my dad from his gig. The ballroom was on the second floor. When we entered, I immediately saw in the corner of the stage a scene that changed my life. There was the drummer and he had a set of flashing lights inside his bass drum! I immediately decided to become a drummer right then.

Times were quite different then. I remember that there was a place called “Bacon’s Casino” on Wabash Avenue. It was a Quonset hut structure, that is, a long tent with a curved roof and flat sides. On many Sundays they would have jam sessions at this place in the afternoons after church and the kids could come and hear the music. Naturally the Smith clan was usually in full attendance. We heard all the cats that were in town at the time or passing through. Roy Eldridge or Coleman Hawkins or whoever, they would make that session on Sundays and we would be there listening.

My first gigs as a drummer were at the Elks social club, with my father. Actually, my very first gig also included a young baritone player named Laurdine Patrick. Everyone called him Pat. He went on to play many years with Sun Ra, touring and traveling across the world. Pat was also on the faculty of SUNY Old Westbury for many years. His son Deval Patrick is the former governor of Massachusetts. I continued drumming during my teen years and playing in the marching and concert bands in high hchool. After my freshman year I stopped taking weekly lessons from my most significant teacher, Oliver S. Coleman, because of the commute to Maywood, an expanding social life, athletics (I started running distances around 8^th grade) and just being a teenager; I grew away from music for probably the only time in my life. I still played in the school bands and did gigs with my father and cousins, but I stopped taking lessons. I also developed a greater interest in architecture, through my friend Joe Black, one of my high school teachers at Proviso, and my dad making me aware of Frank Lloyd Wright and the Bauhaus gang with their glass and steel buildings in Chicago. One of the things that kept me connected with music was the opportunity to perform with Capt. Walter Henry Dyett and his summer concert band. in Washington Park. I would go to DuSable High School every year to see the legendary “High Jinks” show the students put on with live music. My older cousin Eddie played in the sax section with Johnny Griffin, who was also a student of my father.

I mustn’t forget to mention the constant reinforcement I received within my social environment. When we had a social occasion, there was never a question about who would entertain us. We provided our own music for all occasions almost spontaneously. My maternal grandmother’s genesis came about as the result of my African great-grandmother, Nora Sellers, being raped by a white Doctor of Music, Dr. Foxx, who fathered a famous baseball player, Jimmy Foxx. However this worked, my grandmother had 11 children. All of them were thoroughly educated in music. And this musical tradition has continued through another three generations and counting.

KIRPAL GORDON: You were exposed to European classical music as well?

WARREN SMITH: From my family and my studies in school. I managed to get into the District 89 School Band, the only black musician in the band at that time. As a result of this experience, I was immediately accepted into the Proviso Township High School Concert Band. It proved a quantum leap in my exposure as the director, J. Irving Talmadge, was a big fan of Richard Wagner. So I leaned about everything from the “Ring of the Nebilungen” to “Taunhauser Overture.”

I spent four years in the high school marching band (which I abhorred except for the football games). Then at the University of Illinois I spent another four (out of five) years marching with the ”Marching Illini.” The pattern was interrupted in my fourth year when composer Harry Partch did a year’s residency. I quit the band to play tympani in the university’s symphony orchestra. All my extra non-class time was spent in Harry Partch’s ensemble. The previous summer I had received a scholarship to Tanglewood, the summer camp of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. I studied with retiring Roman Shultz and the incoming tympanist, Everitt “Vic” Firth, as well as Harold Faberman, on snare drum techniques.

It was on my summer in Tanglewood that I realized how strong my cultural attachment was to my upbringing in Chicago’s South Side. I borrowed the car of my friend and fellow Illini, Harold Jones, to go into Pittsfield and get a haircut. As I drove, I turned on the radio of the car, and the first thing that came out was the blues! I, in my early arrogance, had lost respect for the form because I had not yet been exposed to its more intricate forms and variations. But the power and familiarity of what I heard changed my opinion of the form forever. I got so homesick I never forgot it. And the next time I got back to Chicago I started hanging out at all the old blues clubs and learning a lot more.

It’s been that way for me ever since.