Welcome, all you new readers. I’m so happy to have you join us! I began this Substack journey when I realized it was time to stop, look back, and tell the stories connected to my life as a musician, artist and writer. It seems we all speed through life, as though it will never end, as though we can circle back at any time to pick up the threads we have left dangling. Because I have remained steadfast in pursuing three masters, music, painting and words, danger has always lurked - the danger of feeling overwhelmed by it all, the danger of being haunted by all those lost threads. Substack is proving to be a lovely place to pause, to gather, to tell the stories which are still very much with me. And of course, to pick up and finish certain unfinished endeavors. I am at my happiest when I am deeply lost in a project, whether it be learning how to play gypsy jazz, write micro-flash stories or create hand-drawn stop-motion animation. And so it goes.
Here is one story of a very deep dive. My husband and I spent ten years on what is known as The South Coast of Massachusetts, the southeastern corner, closer to Providence than Boston. Our house was on the Taunton River which flows past Fall River, emptying into Mount Hope Bay. When we discovered that the King Philip War (1676) was waged in our neighborhood, we went on a deep dive into the history of the conflict between the Wampanoag and the English settlers. Off I went! to Brown University’s Rockefeller Library, combing through historical records, to nearby Bristol, RI to find ‘King Phillip’s Throne’, the place where Phillip would meet with his fellow fighters. I researched the Wampanoag Language, which was being championed at that time by Jessie Little Doe Baird. The local historian shared a map that listed, among other things, ‘Seth Austin’s Oxcart Express to NY.’ An express trip to NY via oxcart??!!?? The Oxcart Man became my narrator. As I’ve said many times, I am at my happiest when I become lost in a quest of curiosity. I fell down the King Phillip well. As a Latin major, I had translated many excerpts from Virgil’s Aeneid. I thought, this needs to be such a narrative poem! I began with an invocation and over the months that followed, I wrote and wrote, painted, rewrote, re-painted, considered writing an opera etc. etc. I created so many versions, that eventually I overwhelmed myself, stepped away, vowing to return after a breather. Perhaps now, fifteen or so years later, it is time to finish. Here are a few excerpts.
THE ROAD TO BRISTOL
Seth, the Oxcart Man speaks: I will tell you what I know, how it happened that hostility arose between two peoples, one nearly naked, lithe, gentle, yet fierce. The other, dressed in wool and shoes, adventurous and wild, in flight from the oppression of the past, in search of freedom and new life. O God of English settlers and Creator Spirit of the native tribes, give me the words to chronicle how trust and friendship turned to fear, openness and goodwill to animosity.
Massasoit, Chief Sagamore of the Wampanoags ruled the land where our scraggly group of pilgrims first set our battered hearts. Disheartened and discouraged, beset with troubles, beaten down by strange and fearsome weather, in flight from persecution, seeking a shred of promise. Massasoit could have wiped us out in those first days. It would not have taken much, but he did not. He visited our shaky colony in the Spring of that first year, extending his hand and faith in a friendship only he envisioned.
The Great Taunton River arises in the mist, its serpentine velvet ribbon winding from north to south, doubling back from time to time to gather fish along the way. Countless suns and moons have witnessed her shimmering summer waves, her still glassiness before the rains, her wild, frantic chop of swirling northern winds, creaking icy slabs that rise and shrink in answer to her tides. The withered leaf that floats along surface waters, driven from below by silent, raging currents, rides the eddies, skimming giant bears of boulders sitting quiet in the cooling mud. The branches of the whispering aspen lean low to hear the rhythms, while across the Northern Dipper fly wild geese, the moon trailing its slow reflection through black waters. We wonder why in a land so wild, the native population thrives, with only skins of animals to cover limbs and feet, only fish to eat and beans and corn to grow, with only their ‘Great Creator Spirit’ to protect them from all evil and misfortune. They describe Namassack Keeswush, the ‘time of catching fish’ when they gather at the upstream runs to catch the herring, running thick. The Wampanoag and the Narragansett share the land along the rocky southern coast. Abundance makes it so. The Wampanoag scattered along The Great River, whose headwaters fingered almost up to Plymouth, while the Narragansett lord to the South along the miles of craggy inlets on that southern facing coast.
We English now are in the second generation brought back from sure starvation by the mighty Wampanoag who first greeted us on tree-thick Plymouth shores. The Great River is the highway for us all with footpaths running north to south along the shores to a fording place in the Segreganset River, then over Richmond Hill and on into Swansea. The path from there heads west finally crossing the Kickimuit, at ‘the place where the otter passes.’
King Phillip speaks: We have been driven back, driven to the edge of land and water. Our hatchets are broken, our bows are snapped, Our fires are nearly extinguished. Before too long, the white man’s oppression will cease, because we shall cease to exist, fugitives in our own land. We are sinking, like little boats tossed in the darkness and the tempest, with neither a pitying eye to weep our fate, nor a friendly hand to mark down the record of our struggle. We are not a people of laws. We are not a people of property. We are not a people of boundaries and possessions. The Englishman’s stone walls begin to line the edges of their fields. Our pine trees shudder with the jarring noise of stone on stone. In Wapicummilcum early spring, when ice in the river is gone, do you not hear the winds murmur in the new leaves? do you not see the shad begin to leap in the river? do you not smell the earth awaken? In Summertime, do you not see the sun make its slow journey north along the horizon, and the moon, in its solstice-shortened arc glow orange through our brother and sister pines? In Autumn, do you not smell the soothing smoke of wood fires burning off the morning chill? or cherish Poquitaqunk Keeswush, the middle between, when we gather the corn beneath the bluer harvest light, before Pepewarr, the white frost, steals it from our mouths. And do you not also gather under your own snow-covered roofs beneath the long moon, the Quinne Keeswush? Will the paradise of hunting grounds be as beautiful as the Taunton is this morning? We hope for happiness and choose not to cloud our minds with unblissful thought. Bliss is not a white man's trait. Our paw-waws soar with The Great Spirit. We dance with the joy of creation with our legs strong and our arms raised to the sky. We will do battle against Habomacho, The Evil Spirit, who would destroy all peacefulness and block our passage into The Great Elysian Fields.
to be continued... and may we all make it to The Great Elysian Fields.
Stunningly beautiful -- both words and images.
beautiful......your Voice ....is heard in a most stunning form......Latin major????????