Bag om RIVERSONG
INTRODUCTION
Nearly all of the poems included in Riversong are new.
They are expressions of personal love, transcendental
realization, and my deep involvement with nature and music.
STREAM. . .RIVER. . .FLOW, that starts off the FOREVER
SONGS Section, for example, is a journey from youth's first
realization of the power of music, when as a nine-year-old
boy, lying in bed, I held a plastic radio up to my ear, listening
to "The Grand Ol' Opry," and heard for the first time the
magical guitar of Chet Atkins. I had never heard anything
remotely like what he was doing with his music. I was transported
into the first heaven I had ever known.
That musical experience awakened me to the realization
that life itself is a stream, a river, an eternal flowng that
forever surrounds us and infuses us and carries us through
waves of music, which only sometimes do we become aware
of. Life is a RIVERSONG filled with light, fire, and beauty.
Life itself is that RIVERSONG.
As my life streamed on, other adventures appeared
to me in that music flow - such as running away from
home in Big Spring west Texas as a 14-year-old boy, hitchhiking
to Memphis, stealing a row boat, and sailing down
the Mississippi River.
That journey was the first of many adventures that
river-streamed through my life, including learning how to
drink beer as a college student, how to make love, and, later
on, how to play guitar, which hearkened me back to the music
of Chet Atkins. STREAM. . .RIVER. . .FLOW also includes
a mini-biography of my journey as the lead guitarist with a
"wild-haired singer" (which some readers will recognize as
Tim Buckley.)
Vis mere