Release A Day #1
Our Story is the poem that sparked my explorations with spoken word expression set to music and started this whole Small Craft Advisory trajectory. It’s birth in 2016 is a remarkable example of a piece of creativity “coming through” as it was hand-written in one sitting with over three pages and there are no cross-outs. It just exploded into being in one fell swoosh, and my wife laughs about this because I had been telling her for at least a month prior to writing Our Story that I was feeling pent up and felt that I needed to be doing “something” in relation to global issues though I had no idea what.
Since then I’ve changed the phrasing of only one line as I feel it delivers better, and I still marvel at the process that brought this thing through. I shot the video in 2017, and though I was generally aware of climate issues, I wasn’t aware yet of the full extent of the problem and my general enthusiasm for the human story and our possible futures was still pretty high at the time. You can see that enthusiasm especially at the end with my “and I can’t wait to see what we’ll write next…” conclusion to the piece. I suspect if I was writing this now it would have a much different tone. However I am choosing to keep it intact as it was written because even though courage has rapidly replaced hope as the operative M.O. for woke folk, I do believe that the sheer amount of variables, especially regarding potential human responses, keeps an extremely cautious optimism in play though it is certainly not dominant.
Regardless, thinking about our story as a common thread binding humanity has a lot of power to it, and in this day and age the more connections we recognize and nurture between individuals, communities, and species, the greater the odds that we will have something of a fighting chance to not go down with the ship.
If this resonates anything with you, please share, send the link to friends and family, tweet it, whatever. I just love the conversation that this piece sparks and hope you explore it too.
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