Bookmarks are for quitters. Coming soon.
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A letter to my love on the occasion of releasing her album, “arnas gabeko dantza”
It is under nothing less than the spell of love that I write these words for you. Watching you work on and compose this music – and very much laboring alongside you – has been an immense treasure covered in miraculous detail. Lunar and solar cycles of natural rhythm, green light, the generosity of unseen forces, has filled us during these past three years. I know multiple worlds because of our love for each other of almost a decade (!). The immense vistas and tiny islands of the world we have traveled. I have known tears in my eyes from your guitar playing; that the moon is called the light for the dead in your tongue; to be humbled in the temple of all-love: these are just some of the moments in time captured and crystallized by my soul and yours.
Love is a beautiful and messy thing. It requires the most from us and gives simple perfection in return. This nothingness is transformed – delivered – into fire flames, as you so wonderfully sing, by open hands extending into the great oceans and winding rivers of life that we sail together.
The spectre of death haunts these songs you have made, yet so too the great and fertile tree of life. To have worked on this project together and to love and support and grow with you is life’s greatest adventure thus far. I have had a few teachers in this life, yet none of them spurn as much growth and expansion in me quite like you. As the mystery undoes and loosens the plot on the story of our lives, as the fire creases and consumes the pages of the tale, my passion for it all grows more and more rich with possibilities. Congratulations on this step – both fascinating and inane – as we continue to journey this mysterious and wonderful life together.
Maite zaitut, Amaia.
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THE SHELBY HOTEL
Downtown Detroit, Michigan, 1974. It’s October the first. A band of musicians are playing under the moniker of The Lyman Woodard Organization and are in the middle of their six-days-a-week residency at JJ’s Lounge within The Shelby Hotel. Their set is recorded that night as a fledgling fundraiser for a freshly minted public radio chapter but otherwise, nothing else from the night survives the graceless passage of time.
In 2014, I am listening to music with my friend and fellow musician, Matt Shaw, and I hear these recordings for the first time. A rabbit hole of connections brought me to the threshold of this jasper fable and I am glittering from the minute it starts. Not in an unfamiliar way, exactly, yet it is a different, instinctual manner. Every second of the 80 minutes of music lights up my imagination and I know that I will engage further with this sudden spasm of inspiration.
Now, here we are, ending the year 2024. It is 50 years after that night in Detroit and I am sharing what I have conspired. A novel and The Shelby Hotel is its title. 146 pages of what amounts to a work of historical fan-fiction. Universal in its niche, like life itself. There is a graciousness of living in the book that I sourced from myself, the recordings of the group, historical research, as well as conversation with those who lived in Detroit at the time, all in order to better tend to the great fires that arose in me. I was honored to have two vivacious and enlightening conversations with Dr. Prof. Leonard King, the drummer for The Lyman Woodard Organization, where he painted a picture of what life was like back then. It was he who found the recorded tapes of the group in the local NPR archives. He recovered, restored and released them on CDr via his own label, Uuquipleu Records, in 2008.
That’s the way it is right now. I hope you like this story in three parts. Order it via the button below to enjoy letting the sun hit the corners of your copy.
Enjoy the act of reading. I, for one, think it’s a good little tale.
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SIS
SIS
A collection of poems by Richard Harper. ~129 pages.
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