Improbably Popular, So Maybe Not Impossible

A number of years ago, when I had a studio in Anaheim, California, I write a song I called AMERICAN DREAM. It was a result of being bombarded with ads and news coverage of the Miss America pageant. I wasn't a fan and so, wrote a tribute to women who didn't fit in the mold—women who didn't wear their hair right; women who used their heads for thinking. (Meaning no disrespect to the women in the pageant who do think... it was just that at the time, that didn't seem to be what won over the judges.)

I arranged it and recorded it as a rock song. As with so many songs recorded by independents, not just my songs, it went nowhere.

In more recent times, when my friend Harper John came to visit me in New Mexico. Harper John and I had formed a band in Hong Kong (The Lapsap Blues Band) and even after we went our ways, we collaborated. He went to The Philippines and I was in the Caribbean, almost exactly on opposite sides of the world. Then, when I was in New Mexico, USA, we decided to record an album called WORLDS APART. I came across this song again, and I asked him to sing it. He did and, as he does, he began messing with the lyrics. Soon the song had left the borders of the US and expanded into IMPOSSIBLE DREAM. Indiekline, our new band name, wasn't a rock band, but alternative, sort of folk rock, so the new arrangement was softer, more expressive.

Still, not much happened with the song (or the album). But Harper John went to Canada and continued to perform it. Eventually his version became a staple in his repertoire. Because he still riffs on it (happily) and writing down the lyrics would be a waste of time. Happily, it gets requested at his performances a surprising number of times. That pleases us both, because it is a song we both like. And his changes, his way of adapting everything he sings to current events and the current mood, keeps it alive.

Here is a video of him jamming on the song with some friends in Canada. it's as rough as Harper John's attitude. I hope you enjoy it.






Breaking News: Harper John has just entered a very unusual song of his Kyrie Eleison, Hallelu (an anthem to the universal common soldier)  in the prestigious SEARCHLIGHT 2019 music contest up in Canada    http://www.cbcmusicsearchlight.ca/ 

If you'd like to vote, public voting begins on Tuesday, Feb. 5, 2019, at 3 p.m. ET until Thursday, Feb. 14, 2019, at 2:59 p.m. ET. The public can vote once per Posted Song per day during the Opening Round Voting Period.

Dreams and hopes

In learning to produce my own books I've done a lot to try an improve the covers. Part of the learning process has involved finding the kinds of images that resonate with me. In the process I've discovered (probably tangentially) that I have a fascination with old buildings. The ones that have been abandoned, left to weather and entropy, are the most interesting.

I've decided I'm drawn to these buildings as symbols of dreams. Sometime in the past, someone built these places, or had them built, and they must've had a vision of a life in them, or perhaps a dream of a prosperous business. Now they look like failed dreams, but I'm not sure they are. Perhaps the dreamers lived a long and happy life, enjoying the building and it was later inhabitants who let the buildings go. Or perhaps tragedy struck.

I've decided that the attraction of these places is the way they function as symbols of the hopes and dreams of people I'll never know. Sometime in the past, someone built these places, or had them built, and they must've had a vision of a life in them, or perhaps a dream of a prosperous business. Now they look like failed dreams, but I'm not sure they are. Perhaps the dreamers lived a long and happy life, enjoying the building and it was later inhabitants who let the buildings go. Or perhaps tragedy struck.

As a writer, I can't help but imagine the stories. Of course, the stories I hear in my head aren't the real stories, but ones I am making up. But that's what a writer does--make shit up. 

I took this set of photos in rural New Mexico. Several are from small mining towns in the Silver City area, where the Santa Rita and Tyrone mines have a long history of being driving forces in the local economy. Unfortunately, mining is a boom and bust proposition, which likely means more dreams and more failures than in other places. The boom and bust provide the attraction and the potential for tragedy/ The dreams had to be phenomenal...of wealth, of even better buildings for growing families. And a bust time meant few had the money to take over properties that had been abandoned. By the time the next boom arrived, brought on by a rise in copper prices, it was time for new buildings and new dreams. The old ones aren't fixed. Why live in the shell of a ruined life when the future beckons?

So my interest isn't nostalgic. I don't want to repair these dreams and move in, but to feel them, they way their dreamers manifested them in wood and concrete.

Hey, everyone needs a hobby.