Love Song No. 6

as some of you may know: ages ago i was in an amazing all native rock and roll band. we grew out of the drama team at the N’Swakamok Native Friendship Centre over there in Sudbury, Ontario. ah but those were some glorious and exciting times!

on stage at the Northern Lights Folk Festival (ages ago!)

the band was called No Reservations and gosh they were a wild bunch! some day we need to write a book about that one.

and so around that time, i bought a Fostex brand 4 track recorder which used basic cassette tapes. i’d plug a cassette in there and use those 4 tracks to try and make something song wise i could take to the band. of course we had that Fostex sitting around at the party house too and some mighty weird songs were recorded on there including the infamous: What to do with Sunday Afternoon… (also on my Youtube channel, warning: coarse language and sexual content in that song!)

anyway: the Fostex and all those original tapes lay buried in a plastic bin back home on the range, for who knows how long. about 5 years ago someone who knows how to transfer these old analog tapes to digital went to work on a few of them and we ended up with some snap shots of the past, which we still need to make videos for and post them to the twinravens youtube channel. for kicks you see!

recently though i was given a gizmo that connects a guitar into a computer to record on Garage Band. this thing is an Apogee brand “jam” connector. the line in is the 1/4 inch jack and the line out is this magic whatever it is that turns your guitar into a digital. but instead of plugging the quarter inch line in jack from the guitar i plugged the far end into this Fostex and boom: we can hear all these old tapes once again but this time on computer. super fun stuff especially as some of this “insane and abstract” music hasn’t seen the light of day since 1995. like: The Shadow of You. (yikes! what a song!)

anyway. i haven’t got the details sound wise figured out: how to mix these four tracks into the digital without a lot of back ground noise, buzz, and all that crap that goes with a jangle of wires all over the table top. and i’m no ACE when it comes to using Garage Band! i’m still trying to figure that one out!

but here is Love Song Number 6 for you! fussed with last night to the tune of a half a dozen beers, a lot of wiggling and waggling of wires and yes the mix is very muddy, but this is our first run at reviving these old tapes and putting them on the youtube air.

Fostex analog to Garage Band digital, first attempt.

i think i wrote and recorded this in 1994 when the band was starting up and really getting going. we were a rock and roll band so this song definitely didn’t make the set list.

i put this cheesy video together last night after fussing for several hours with the sound and those measly 4 tracks! (gosh the business of recording sound, songs and so on is time consuming! best not to be consuming a half dozen beers along the way… (we’ll try it again on the sober straight and narrow very soon!)) the drawings in the video come from that time! those are drawings of mine from a sketch book dated 1994/1995. you’ll even see the famed Stacie from Malibu in there! gosh she was a thunderbolt!

anyway! there it is! my first attempt to revive these old songs of mine that never made the No Rez set list or album list. i had a lot of fun trying to figure this out last night and yes, those tasty German beers can become a diversion in the process but you have to remember last night it was a blistering 30 C plus! up here on the 3rd floor it was smoking hot! we were down to our bikinis!

Me and Shag going to work in No Reservations

ah but the music business was fun and how i would love to get back into it. but a fella like me needs a band and right now my band is working other irons in other fires.

the glass ain’t half empty/full, its BONE DRY!

you see in the band i was never one of the vocalists. we had 3 good singers up front and that is where they’re supposed to be! a voice like mine just couldn’t run in that race but i was mighty happy to be in there on one of the guitars.

here is what the band really sounds like, with all the bells and whistles of a fancy studio production:

Nice work!

so i’ll go back to work on those old cassette tapes and see what we can scrounge up in the lost songs/Fostex dept. (might be best to start the project in the morning minus the German pilsners! ha!)

and that’s the story behind: Love Song Number 6. words and music by Mark Seabrook. artwork too, drawn over the fun times of 1994 and 1995. what art fun!

update: November 8, 2022: full moon is on the rise, very far north on the tree line to the east, out here on the open range. no wind on a night like this means sweet and wonderful beauty! the landscape is at peace which means we can be too! wonderful way to spend a Tuesday night! anyway: I wanted to re share this classic twinravens song with you. I hope you like it!

The Inner Me

“I never travel without my diary.  One should always have something sensational to read in the train.”  – Oscar Wilde

Cue this music up before reading further:

And so here we are at the end of another year…  Tomorrow night’s party scene is still up for grabs, we haven’t booked any seats at any shows, so the what have you is mightily up in the air.  New Year’s Eve…  and standing on the doorstep to another whole DIFF decade.  As my dad would say:  after we figured we’d lived through the war we started watching our step a bit more in detail.

Well I’m not in where the bullets are flying and the bombs are going off, but I’m out here alone, my 3 older brothers are dead, my 3 younger ones missing.  I would have liked to have spent at least an hour with them over the holiday season but none of that came to pass.  Instead I’m alone here in my crib.

Bright eyed and bushy tailed: but a castle aint no home when you’re always in it alone.

I always wonder where they are: in heaven or in hell.  I’m not like them in that way so I don’t know much about it.  All I know is I joined the resistance when I was age 13 and I’d like to entertain them here at my place, all these years later.

They always said I’d likely go far, after we were reintroduced, all of us, in our very early 20’s or late teens, I was only 18 at the time and hadn’t seen any of them since 1969, or was it 1971?  All I know is when I saw them again, I knew I didn’t want to be like them.  I’d been away far too long and after sitting with them, I knew I’d likely never be going back.  Little did I know, at that time, they were all trauma survivors with this thing they call in mod times:  PTSD.  They didn’t get the special jungle training that I got and they didn’t have a Major like I had.

I’ve sat here alone for quite some time, wondering about that shack in the woods, back on the blacker side of the rez, back in the mid to late 60’s.  I know we had a wood stove because I remember hauling wood back to the house and I have this vague memory of my mom standing there with an arm load of poplar, cut yes, but not split.

In the past decade I’ve been there myself, on my own paradise on the range: hauling wood, poplar too, but doing it the old fashioned way, bringing it out one load at time, using a wheelbarrow, and getting a pretty decent work out along the way.  Of course the road out of the back woods was a 2% decline back to the house, so it was easy rolling out those 12 cords.

In mod times, like here and now, I wonder, how warm those rooms could have been at night, back in 68: who was up tending the fire?  If memory serves, the upstairs had 2 little bedrooms with old mattresses that were falling apart and coming undone and who knows what kind of hell went on up there…  I was going to ask my older brother about it.  I came up with the idea in a July, a few days later he fell over dead and took the stories with him. He’s been dead now, has it been 5 years?

When I was in university ages ago, an old Indian man sat us down and he said you boys have nothing to worry about right now, but if you have the good fortune of getting as old as me, down the road in those days you’ll be visited by many an old memory, things you’d left alone up until now, as an old man.  I silently and invisibly scoffed at the idea, I was only 22 at the time.  Pretty soon an Anishnabe Kwe walked in and she gave us the Sweetgrass teaching.  She was working on a braid and explaining things to us and she looked at me and said:  if you reach the age you’ll find yourself going through some strange times and maybe seeing some strange things, either here or over there.  Once again I, to myself, scoffed at the idea and I remember it well:  It won’t happen to me.  That is what I said, back when I was 22, when I was as terrible as an army poised for battle.

But here we are, like they said, at that time, the empty nest looming like never before.  And all of the brothers now long gone.  I have no idea where the survivors are, how they’re doing, what is going on south of us.  South of me.  There is no “us” anymore.

Me too, chief.  We’re starting to get there!  I see young whippersnappers all the time and I know I am no longer them!  No middle age either!  Nope.  We’re off to another place, if all goes well, with a wee spot of wisdom or a splash of education, maybe we can get through this.  My dad has been gone a long time but I sure do hear his voice these days, telling me what to watch out for, to watch my step, and above all, what to be thankful for.

I’m not much of a Christmas person, the season, the bells and whistles.  It makes for a great cash grab yes, in these mod times, but I’d rather give them the cash than to some corporate who ever and so that is what we do.  I’ve never been one for standing in a line over there at the mall.

Xmas eve has come and gone.  Xmas day is here and been.  Boxing Day I was in the car, alone, and coming back to here.  And through those days I never heard from any of them.  The survivors I mean.

We haven’t booked any seats at any shows for tomorrow night but I hear it and see it all around:  2020:  The Roaring Twenties!  I guess they are.  And they surely were!  I don’t plan on wandering around these empty rooms on such a night, so if you don’t hear from me between now and then:  Best wishes and I hope you have a happy new year, and I hope this time, 12 months from now, we’ll be sharing a few more stories!

And so this was written right before NYE, right before the pandemic landed on us and turned 2020 into a very weird year.  I still haven’t seen any of the younger lads, they’re out there somewhere.  But the oldest one comes to visit me every now and then, or so it seems.  And it’s weird as he visits as the 19 year old he was, when he passed, and here he is visiting this lad up into his 50’s.  There is something strange about that.

Also strange, I was reading this post and it mentions my dad who lived through the war and whose voice I hear all the time, telling me what to watch out for.  It also mentions my dad who never split the wood we were bringing out of the woods back in 68.  They’re two vastly different men.  One man left me in the woods to starve to death, the other saved my life.  

I might have to go into quarantine for a few weeks and if that is the case I’m going to bring this typewriter with me and write this thing tentatively called “Fighting In Hell” about my art journey as a 60’s Scoop Survivor.  Other cooler heads in the outfit want to call it “Crashing the Thunderbird”, so the title for this thing is still up for grabs.  One thing is for sure, it IS an art journey and I need several days and nights to sit down in a room with a view, in more social isolation, and write this thing.  Maybe play some Erik Satie while I’m writing the first draft.  

I’ll let you know how it goes.

March 11, 2021.

Summer Solstice

wow! i’m at home, on the range, south east Manitoulin Island, in a paradise! peace, blue and green in every direction this Sunday morning. mega wowza!

My Home on the Range: I’d drive all night to get back home.

and i did drive all night to get back home! i split O Town around 8 p.m. Friday, after all was said and done at the office. the temperature was way the flipping up around 32 C, boiling hot and brutal in the city. folks over there sitting on their pavement and concrete, sitting in their shades, fussing and seriously fuming in that urban nightmare. i looked it over, chuckling, knowing full well that i had a place of peace just 8 short hours down the open highway.

Last week’s weather forecast, O Town.

it was a smoker of a day over there and i was glad to be leaving! glad to be leaving the city heat and the nightmarish city scenes: folks in all sorts of distress.

Highway 17 between Deep River and Mattawa, around midnight.

like i said before: there is no short version to the drive from O Town to the range: it is all of 8 hours. so my thing is, lets make a night of it and pull over along the way to see the stars and to smell the landscape in the boon docks section where there is big time no light or noise pollution. the scene above though: they’re fixing a bridge out there and its down to one lane.

Nice work!

with all that alone time you can take a few moments to think about the work day, business week and the scenes along the way. this instagram post caught my attention!

Fostex plugged into MacBook: digitizing old twinravens songs!

when you’re sitting at the starting point of an 8 hour drive you almost wonder if its worth the time and effort. had i stayed in the city i’d be back to fooling around with the old Fostex plugged into the computer but i’d been working on that every night of the work week and of course i saw the forecast for saturday!

Saturday afternoon, June 20th.

a heat wave doesn’t mean a thing when you have a river running through it! and we surely do out here on the open range!

My home sweet home!

there she is! at around 130 yesterday afternoon, smoking hot, a gin and tonic, and mission accomplished: home and exactly what i imagined during the work week. definitely worth an 8 hour drive turned into about 12 hours on the road, over night.

at home with the river

she said: you have beautiful legs. (how nice of her!)

anishnabe sun worship

okay so maybe i don’t have the figure i had a short 4 years ago but one thing is for darn sure: yesterday’s round of sun worship was exactly what the doctor ordered! and exactly what i’d imagined! and this old boy is still on the mend! i hope to be back to my “old self” soon!

a summer evening at home

gosh it is hard to believe i’ve been living on the road going on 4 years… hopefully by the time i get back there will be a deck on the front of that house! when it gets there and when i get there i’m going to crack open something very tasty and sit down out there, enjoy my view, thank my lucky stars, and remember too my many nights in the city.

an artist alone in the city

but we are here today and it is NOW! it is a paradise in every direction out here: bird song in every direction and the quiet sounds of the river. yes sweet yes! it is wonderful be here at home. much love!

Love Song No. 6

as some of you may know: ages ago i was in an amazing all native rock and roll band. we grew out of the drama team at the N’Swakamok Native Friendship Centre over there in Sudbury, Ontario. ah but those were some glorious and exciting times!

on stage at the Northern Lights Folk Festival (ages ago!)

the band was called No Reservations and gosh they were a wild bunch! some day we need to write a book about that one.

and so around that time, i bought a Fostex brand 4 track recorder which used basic cassette tapes. i’d plug a cassette in there and use those 4 tracks to try and make something song wise i could take to the band. of course we had that Fostex sitting around at the party house too and some mighty weird songs were recorded on there including the infamous: What to do with Sunday Afternoon… (also on my Youtube channel, warning: coarse language and sexual content in that song!)

anyway: the Fostex and all those original tapes lay buried in a plastic bin back home on the range, for who knows how long. about 5 years ago someone who knows how to transfer these old analog tapes to digital went to work on a few of them and we ended up with some snap shots of the past, which we still need to make videos for and post them to the twinravens youtube channel. for kicks you see!

recently though i was given a gizmo that connects a guitar into a computer to record on Garage Band. this thing is an Apogee brand “jam” connector. the line in is the 1/4 inch jack and the line out is this magic whatever it is that turns your guitar into a digital. but instead of plugging the quarter inch line in jack from the guitar i plugged the far end into this Fostex and boom: we can hear all these old tapes once again but this time on computer. super fun stuff especially as some of this “insane and abstract” music hasn’t seen the light of day since 1995. like: The Shadow of You. (yikes! what a song!)

anyway. i haven’t got the details sound wise figured out: how to mix these four tracks into the digital without a lot of back ground noise, buzz, and all that crap that goes with a jangle of wires all over the table top. and i’m no ACE when it comes to using Garage Band! i’m still trying to figure that one out!

but here is Love Song Number 6 for you! fussed with last night to the tune of a half a dozen beers, a lot of wiggling and waggling of wires and yes the mix is very muddy, but this is our first run at reviving these old tapes and putting them on the youtube air.

Fostex analog to Garage Band digital, first attempt.

i think i wrote and recorded this in 1994 when the band was starting up and really getting going. we were a rock and roll band so this song definitely didn’t make the set list.

i put this cheesy video together last night after fussing for several hours with the sound and those measly 4 tracks! (gosh the business of recording sound, songs and so on is time consuming! best not to be consuming a half dozen beers along the way… (we’ll try it again on the sober straight and narrow very soon!)) the drawings in the video come from that time! those are drawings of mine from a sketch book dated 1994/1995. you’ll even see the famed Stacie from Malibu in there! gosh she was a thunderbolt!

anyway! there it is! my first attempt to revive these old songs of mine that never made the No Rez set list or album list. i had a lot of fun trying to figure this out last night and yes, those tasty German beers can become a diversion in the process but you have to remember last night it was a blistering 30 C plus! up here on the 3rd floor it was smoking hot! we were down to our bikinis!

Me and Shag going to work in No Reservations

ah but the music business was fun and how i would love to get back into it. but a fella like me needs a band and right now my band is working other irons in other fires.

the glass ain’t half empty/full, its BONE DRY!

you see in the band i was never one of the vocalists. we had 3 good singers up front and that is where they’re supposed to be! a voice like mine just couldn’t run in that race but i was mighty happy to be in there on one of the guitars.

ah for kicks here is another one of the Fostex tapes digitized by one of the lads who really knows how to make the sound proper and clean. well, as clean as it can be considering the tape is 25 years old! (this is what Love Song Number 6 is supposed to sound like, less the tasty German pilsners!)

WARNING: Coarse language and sexual content.

made up on the spot, Sunday morning, Suds, 1995

this is one of those songs made up on the spot: no lyrics written, just made up as the tape rolled. same with the guitar, i picked up Shag’s 12 string and hit the record button. you can hear Shag in the back at the beginning, he’s cooking up breakfast. that’s also Shag in the background vocal which is kooky as he is a LEAD vocal!

here is what the band really sounds like, with all the bells and whistles of a fancy studio production:

Nice work!

so i’ll go back to work on those old cassette tapes and see what we can scrounge up in the lost songs/Fostex dept. (might be best to start the project in the morning minus the German pilsners! ha!)

and that’s the story behind: Love Song Number 6. words and music by Mark Seabrook. artwork too, drawn over the fun times of 1994 and 1995. what art fun!

update: November 8, 2022: full moon is on the rise, very far north on the tree line to the east, out here on the open range. no wind on a night like this means sweet and wonderful beauty! the landscape is at peace which means we can be too! wonderful way to spend a Tuesday night! anyway: I wanted to re share this classic twinravens song with you. it is a cluster you know what, but still, after all these years, I believe in in a lot more than UFO’s. ha!

I hope you like it!

The Inner Me

“I never travel without my diary.  One should always have something sensational to read in the train.”  – Oscar Wilde

Cue this music up before reading further:

And so here we are at the end of another year…  Tomorrow night’s party scene is still up for grabs, we haven’t booked any seats at any shows, so the what have you is mightily up in the air.  New Year’s Eve…  and standing on the doorstep to another whole DIFF decade.  As my dad would say:  after we figured we’d lived through the war we started watching our step a bit more in detail.

Well I’m not in where the bullets are flying and the bombs are going off, but I’m out here alone, my 3 older brothers are dead, my 3 younger ones missing.  I would have liked to have spent at least an hour with them over the holiday season but none of that came to pass.  Instead I’m alone here in my crib.

Bright eyed and bushy tailed: but a castle aint no home when you’re always in it alone.

I always wonder where they are: in heaven or in hell.  I’m not a christian like them so I don’t know nothing much about it.  All I know is I joined the resistance when I was age 13 and I’d like to entertain them here at my place, all these years later.

They always said I’d likely go far, after we were reintroduced, all of us, in our very early 20’s or late teens, I was only 18 at the time and hadn’t seen any of them since 1969, or was it 1971?  All I know is when I saw them again, I knew I didn’t want to be like them.  I’d been away far too long and after sitting with them, I knew I’d likely never be going back.  Little did I know, at that time, they were all trauma survivors with this thing they call in mod times:  PTSD.  They didn’t get the special jungle training that I got and they didn’t have a Major like I had.

I’ve sat here alone for quite some time, wondering about that shack in the woods, back on the blacker side of the rez, back in the mid to late 60’s.  I know we had a wood stove in there because I remember hauling wood back to the house and I have this vague memory of my mom standing there with an arm load of poplar, cut yes, but not split.  When was my dad planning on doing that?

In the past decade I’ve been there myself, on my own paradise on the range: hauling wood, poplar too, but doing it the old fashioned way, bringing it out one load at time, using a wheelbarrow, and getting a pretty decent work out along the way.  Of course the road out of the back woods was a 2% decline back to the house, so it was easy rolling out those 12 cords.

In mod times, like here and now, I wonder, how warm those rooms could have been at night, back in 68: who was up tending the fire?  If memory serves, the upstairs had 2 little bedrooms with old mattresses that were falling apart and coming undone and who knows what kind of hell went on up there…  I was going to ask my older brother about it.  I came up with the idea in a July, a few days later he fell over dead and took the stories with him. He’s been dead now, has it been 5 years?

When I was in university ages ago, an old Indian man sat us down and he said you boys have nothing to worry about right now, but if you have the good fortune of getting as old as me, down the road in those days you’ll be visited by many an old memory, things you’d left alone up until now, as an old man.  I silently and invisibly scoffed at the idea, I was only 22 at the time.  Pretty soon an Anishnabe Kwe walked in and she gave us the Sweetgrass teaching.  She was working on a braid and explaining things to us and she looked at me and said:  if you reach the age you’ll find yourself going through some strange times and maybe seeing some strange things, either here or over there.  Once again I, to myself, scoffed at the idea and I remember it well:  It won’t happen to me.  That is what I said, back when I was 22, when I was as terrible as an army poised for battle.

But here we are, like they said, at that time, the empty nest looming like never before.  And all of the brothers now long gone.  I have no idea where the survivors are, how they’re doing, what is going on south of us.  South of me.  There is no “us” anymore.

Me too, chief.  We’re starting to get there!  I see young whippersnappers all the time and I know I am no longer them!  No middle age either!  Nope.  We’re off to another place, if all goes well, with a wee spot of wisdom or a splash of education, maybe we can get through this.  My dad has been gone a long time but I sure do hear his voice these days, telling me what to watch out for, to watch my step, and above all, what to be thankful for.

I’m not much of a Christmas person, like I said, I’m not a christian, and I don’t buy into how they sell it: that long ago story from overseas.  It makes for a great cash grab yes, in these mod times, but I’d rather give them the cash than to some corporate who ever and so that is what we do.  I’ve never been one for standing in a line over there at the mall.

Xmas eve has come and gone.  Xmas day is here and been.  Boxing Day I was in the car, alone, and coming back to here.  And through those days I never heard from any of them.  The survivors I mean.

We haven’t booked any seats at any shows for tomorrow night but I hear it and see it all around:  2020:  The Roaring Twenties!  I guess they are.  And they surely were!  I don’t plan on wandering around these empty rooms on such a night, so if you don’t hear from me between now and then:  Best wishes and I hope you have a happy new year, and I hope this time, 12 months from now, we’ll be sharing a few more stories!

 

SUN INFINITY MOON Book Review

Mark Seabrook is multifaceted with a tremendously creative spirit and a flair for storytelling, using the musical, visual and literary arts to carry forward his unique “voice”.  

SUN INFINITY MOON is the latest literary offering from Mark and is a collection of anecdotal accounts – years in the making – as told through an Anishnabe character named Sun, whom, along with all the others who make an appearance in this book is reportedly fictitious, existing, as Mark states in the foreword “wholly within the author’s imagination”…  ”Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events or locals [sic] is entirely coincidental.”

For readers who may be familiar with Mark Seabrook’s life and works, the coincidental resemblances are pronounced and one finds it impossible to refrain from attempting to deduce what is real and what is imagined.  Perhaps that is precisely the way Mark intends it to be?

We begin with:  We found a pile of human bones on the floor of the tree house.”  A pretty great opening line for book of stories!  “There was no order to the way they were piled, it was all abstract expressionism, Jackson Pollock style […] It was that fuckin’ skull, upright, jaw missing, top teeth gnarling on the coarse floor boards, frontal and parietal blaring like a pair of brand new stripper shoes mailed in from L.A., that caught my attention.  At some point in time that was someone’s think tank.  Someone’s whole of everything was up there, everything they could imagine and cherish, childhood memories, first love, the nightmares, were stowed and secure in that brain case, which was now bone dry, on a floor.  Empty.  The maggots had cleaned house and run off.”  Mark’s phrasing and descriptors all throughout the book are marvellously evocative whether they are conveying Anishnabe angst or reflecting on non-native practices.

And there is A LOT of Anishnabe angst.  And anger.  And revengeful ravings.  Amidst the playful dark humour and erotic tales there is an unmistakable undercurrent of humans behaving badly.  Such non-edifying things I have trained myself to avoid – but as Mark is a friend and I was proud he had followed through on his goal of publishing this book, I thought it was important to give it a read and gain some understanding.  

Mark had a compelling desire to convey a “sick and disgusting story” (his words, private correspondence) without an editor’s assistance, for fear that any editing would perhaps make the stories less “his” and risk becoming adulterated by the influence of non-native manipulation.  Such close protectionism causes the book to suffer, however, and I understand a second printing is in the works, with some essential grammatical improvements that should not conflict with the telling of these tales.

Nevertheless, for all it’s disjointed recapitulations and errors, SUN INFINITY MOON is actually rich with layers of meaning, above and beyond the unpleasant disrespect the characters (both native and non-native) show for each other, for non-human creatures and for the environment.  The deepest layer Mark Seabrook crafts for readers is that a great wrong has been done to Anishnabe youth with lingering, festering wounds that continue to hinder mental wellness and self-actualization.  That dark layer of meaning is the type of wrong that occurs in all cultures, worldwide, and to this reviewer signals a psychological malfunction present within the human species itself.  It is a darkness that when illuminated by awareness, inspiration and inner discipline can be channeled into human constructs that ennoble, enrich and transform, allowing each of us to better discover our inherent talent and live up to our full potential.

If the intention of this book was to amuse and entertain while unveiling a host of deleterious behaviours and events, intermingling sweet memories with frightful ones, it has achieved that end.  It may have been cathartic for Mark Seabrook to write such a series of tales…future works will reflect that or not.  Within Mark’s character “Moon”, we see it is possible to develop awareness…perhaps in a future literary exploration, Mark can expand upon that and use his creative storytelling techniques to help humans transcend the species-wide affliction of destructive behaviours.  That would be a book I would be glad to recommend!

L.  Manitoulin Island

Page 15, from “May 11, 1996”, SUN.  Sun Infinity Moon, by Mark Seabrook.

Back cover:  Sun Infinity Moon, by Anishnabe artist and author: Mark Seabrook.

Missing In Action, painted face masks, acrylic on canvas, 30×30 inches, by anishnabe artist Mark Seabrook.  Private collection.

Missing In Action, on display in Ottawa, 2014.

Killed In Action, painted face mask and acrylic on canvas, 30×30 inches, by anishnabe artist Mark Seabrook.  Private collection.  (On display in Ottawa, 2014)

Sun Infinity Moon Book Review

“I finished the book yesterday, I couldn’t put it down! The sex scenes were hot, humorous and I loved Mark’s rawness, his truth, the details, the characters, journeys, their thoughts: so real!

I could hear his voice and the way he talks, and jokes, telling the story!

The history and raw truth are so touching, I wanted to hear more. I felt a deeper compassion hearing his experiences. The “nish” accent was hilarious but true to our men. I laughed a lot and ohh that ending made me cry!

His detail is impeccable. I wanted more about their journeys. So many more avenues: more books, a play, a movie!

His readers will want more.

So glad I went to the book launch and got my copy. I can think of so many that would enjoy this book and could relate: namely native males I know, with similar tough journeys.”

M.D., Manitoulin Island F/N.

Back cover of the artist proof:  filled with typos and layout errors!  Ah well.  The reprint will be here soon and hopefully bug free…

I have a couple of more book reviews coming in soon!  But I’ll tell you this:  writing a story like this and having folks give it the once over, the response is SUPER telling!  i.e.:  one gal was all friendly and happy and poops and giggles before, after…  she wouldn’t even look at me!  I mean she would cross over to the other side of the street when she saw me coming along!  WOW!

I get that this IS a tough sell.  We’re a long way from the Disneyland and Hollywood Indian stereotypes.  But I’m not a Joseph Boyden or an Archie Grey Owl!  Ha ha.

twinravens on November 5th, acrylic on canvas board, 8×10 inches.  One of the 25 or so pieces we have ready for this weekend’s pop up art show in Perth, Ontario!  Details are on the Facebook page.

Life and Times of a Famous Native Canadian Artist, Vol. 3

ha ha!  joking of course.  we’re not booked to be at the MET any time soon nor do we have important pieces over at the NGC.  we are the classic:  legends in our own minds!  and so yes, with a chuckle:

the “Black Framed Originals” we’ve been working on this autumn, preparing for a pop up flash art show in November.  that is an 18×24 inch canvas board, Mother Earth sketch,  and it is one of 20 we have ready go!  the painting just above it i have been looking at for about a year.

the painting just above, Detail: Who Is She?, 30×48″, on canvas.  the original painting of the girl on the lake, winter, 1990, yeah it was a peaceful scene but i just had to HACK it!  5 years ago it came back from where it was on display and by that time i had opened up the “art bridge” and re read a few articles on Jackson Pollock!  so this canvas was just begging to be re worked.

yes yes it is not the classically painted face but that wasn’t what we were going for then nor is it what we’re going for today!  fact of the matter is: hey i like this one.  like i said i’ve been looking at it for a year, hanging on my wall over here in Ottawa, and i’m starting to think maybe i’ll keep that one.

Striking a Pose, in Whitedog, Ontario, sometime in the spring of 1991.  that was on the Toronto at Dreamer’s Rock National Tour, Debajehmujig Theatre Group, and we’re about half way into that tour.  i had friends who are now long dead and gone, dust and bones, from up there, who hadn’t been home in years, and when i told them i might be passing through their old starting point they told me to get some pictures.  this of course was not the photo they were expecting!  (story of my life, ha!)

i recently saw this old photo and others when muddling and “muggling” the idea about the next writing project:  Fighting In Hell, an anishnabe’s art journey.  the title for that writing project is still in the works and the stories within: an artist story, what to leave in, what to leave out?

that is the great Gabor Mate and his lad, in Toronto on Friday night, October 18th.  they were in town to make a presentation on parents and their adult children and the business of healing.  very interesting!  but my question was and is this:  what if the adult child has had several sets of parents from bio parents to foster parents to adoptive parents of a different culture, all within the first 7 or 8 years of life?

175 participants signed up for that 3 day presentation and you can bet any time Gabe opened the floor for questions about 80 hands shot up, and usually the same 80 hands!  so i didn’t get to ask my question.  you see Gabe is a genius.  you have questions along these lines, he has answers.  google his name if you’re not in the know.

175 x 350 = 61 250.  nice work!

half of the “artist uniform”, at the conference, front row.  you can bet the other half of the artist uniform had things to read/say and that place being 98% women participants, there certainly were a few readers!  Nature.  Cheaper than Therapy.

back in Markham before the bug out: wiggling the toes!  the boss man is up on the 9th chilling and i’m in the lobby switching out of the artist wear black boots for some basics: the new car has a standard transmission and folks i like to have my barefeet on those three peddles.  this being mid October, black socks will have to do!

blazing down the 401, east bound, Sunday night alone, in the brand new limo:  put the radio on and up came 10cc, I’m Not in Love.  it being the oldies FM station they weren’t cheap and played the 6 minute version.  sweet.  kooky too, riding through the mild autumn night, all those heavy duty thoughts from the conference stewing, all those heavy duty memories from what seems like another life time ago, stewing, the open road, the wiggly toes, and the here and now…

kind of peculiar how things work out…

as a refresh: here are the opening few lines of the original life and times of, Vol. 1, posted way back in the autumn of 2017.  ah but what a beautiful September it was in 2017:  6 weeks of Indian Summer on the open range, a paint brush in my hand during the day, a glass or a key pad at night.  30 C during the afternoon, 20 C at night, for 6 wonderful weeks, down in the cosy back country of Tehkummah: no light or noise pollution.  no neighbours.  nothing but a suitcase full of 20 dollar bills and the artist with an agenda.

Life And Times Of A Famous Native Canadian Artist…

ha! i say that jokingly! because i’m out here on the range, going on 21 days now without a note of art conversation, idea expressed verbally, or hint of a hand to hold while under the mighty Milky Way. she’s new moon boys. and so, alone under the almighty, with eagles roosting down by the river (what music they make first thing in the morning!) and the great wide open: there is room to stretch the “art making arms”. we have some good looking pieces but we’re also getting down to the bottom of the paint barrels.

so last night around 7 i stowed the gear, set a table for one, lit a candle, cracked open a Paul Jaboulet Aine Cornas Domaine de Saint Pierre (2012), sparked up the youtube for a little dinner music and instead got attracted to a documentary about alien abductions. i watched the nutty scenes, heard the kook house stories, heard the so called experts blabbering on about all this stars and moon and space stuff and…

From the twinravens blog:  September 2017.

now i have no idea what i did to the comments section here,  see it is turned off.  but you can always email at twinravens at hotmail or twinravens at gmail.

miigwetch.

Paintings by Mark Seabrook

Power Bird, acrylic on canvas board, 18×24 inches, by anishnabe artist Mark Seabrook.  Available for purchase as of Oct. 3/019.

Power Bird No. 5, acrylic on canvas board, 9×12 inches, by anishnabe artist Mark Seabrook.  Available.

I have to admit I’m having fun with these pieces in frames!  Normally we sell them as unframed canvas boards but I decided to switch things up last summer, and so here we are in October with a sizeable collection, getting ready for that show in November!

Power Bird No. 6, acrylic on canvas board, 8×10 inches, by anishnabe artist Mark Seabrook.  Available.

Tehkummah Scenes, acrylic on canvas, 8×10 inches, from the original run in 2013, artist collection.

Twinravens, Winter Scenes, acrylic on canvas board, 5×7 inches, by anishnabe artist Mark Seabrook.

Tehkummah Scenes, acrylic on canvas board, 5×7 inches, by anishnabe artist Mark Seabrook.  Available.

Big Bucks!  Acrylic on canvas board, 5×7 inches, by anishnabe artist Mark Seabrook.  Available.

Power Bird, acrylic on canvas, 8×10 inches, by anishnabe artist Mark Seabrook.  Available.

Visiting from Over Seas, acrylic on canvas board, 14×18 inches, by anishnabe artist Mark Seabrook.  Available.

We ship anywhere.

And so yes:  I’m having some fun here framing up these new pieces and going through the collections, framing up a few of the war horses, pieces I just couldn’t part with, playing with a new look.  And it IS fun.  We’ll be ready for that show in November!

 

Night on the Range

Spent a few minutes after the fun had been done, gave Bob Dylan’s “I and I” as heard on Real Live (1985) a listen, and looked up at the mega stars, Australian Shiraz in hand, and pondered the many sunrises…

Sunrise on the Range

Looked at the work from today: small stuff but fun, with room for adventure once we have one of those windy days on the bridge, a few cans of big paint, a few butter knives, and some sun tanned arms.

Another sunrise on the Range

Thought about my walk around in my new rubber boots, tied tight as the snow is up around my knees, pointed my camera in a hundred directions and never snapped a one of them.

Another sunrise on the Range.

It’s Thursday night on the open range. I can hear the river and the wind and I can feel November in the corner of my rooms.

Sunrise on the Range.

We shall soon see what tomorrow has for us. I’ll dream too, of a time for this…

Thanksgiving at the River