A (subjectively) racialized view of art forms created and practiced by peoples of colour, haiku (Part I)

Miles Davis on living-traveling overseas for the first time in 1949.

"I had never felt that way in my life. It was the freedom of being in France and being treated like a human being, like someone important."

Paris was where I understood that all white people weren't the same, that some weren't prejudiced and others were. I had kind of known this after I met Gil Evans and some other people, but I really came to know it in Paris. It was an important thing for me to know and it made me conscious of what was happening around me politically. . . . It was (difficult) for me to come back to the bullshit white people put a black person through in this country.

In Paris - shit, whatever we played over there, right or wrong, was cheered, accepted. That ain't good either . . . We came back over here and couldn't even find no work. International stars and couldn't get jobs. White musicians who were copying my Birth of Cool thing were getting the jobs. Man, that shit hurt me to the quick. . . .Twenty three years old in 1949 . . . Started to drift . . . I didn't care anymore . . . What got me strung out (on heroin) was the depression I felt when I got back to America."   (Davis Miles, MILES: The Autobiography, Simon & Schuster, 1989)

64 years later, in 2013. In the Ashibetsu Mountains just northeast of Sapporo Japan. I was on a six month paid artist in residency. Much like Miles, whatever I created right or wrong sold out. That wasn't good either, although it gave me a sense of unbridled confidence, self determination, and sparked an unrelenting artistic drive in me; I would need it once I began facing the artistic disappointments and setbacks I would encounter upon returning to the states.

In Tokyo & Sapporo much like Miles in Paris, I too was treated as Miles put it "like a human being, like someone important". I too had to then "come back to the bullshit white people put a black person through in this country".

Much like Miles upon my return "I came back and couldn't even find no (poetry writing) work". To paraphrase Miles "Man, that shit hurt me to the quick . . . Forty eight years old in 2013 . . . started to drift . . . I didn't care anymore . . . What got me strung out on living alone in the woods like a hermit was the depression I felt when I got back to America." For me living in the woods was my form of coping, my heroin, and still is. 

Living, hiking, meditating, writing, and photographing in the woods, was and is for me my euphoric heroin like escape, it helps me cope, only in a healthy, but nonetheless addictive manner. What will happen to me when I can't get my backcountry fix no more?

"People all over the world ... That's the barometer of what your doing; not the critics; the people. They don't have no hidden agenda or hidden motives. They paid their money (in my case to view my books & prints) to see you, and if they don't like what you are doing, they're going to let you know, and quick" (Miles Davis)