Get yer early bird specials on Kickstarter. By Zach Hively Writing a book is supposed to be a crowning achievement in a writer’s life. One must spend years, sometimes entire months, in deep contemplation, self-reflection, and total isolation in order to tease out the meaningful contributions to one’s life that brought one to the brink of a lifetime of royalty checks. Then, one must actually write the book. But in my experience, the challenge of writing a book is mere marshmallow fluff compared to the heavy lifting of crafting the perfect book announcement. The Book Announcement is where the skillful author introduces the Unifying Themes and Greater Purposes that Oprah will later discuss with him as part of her eventual presidential campaign tour. Within these few words, the author draws out the pending book’s key concepts by using an illustrative metaphor or some other spare literary device, so that future book groups can truncate their discussions and go straight to drinking wine. The trick for the author, of course, is to decide which illustrative metaphor he’s going to use, because he already put most of his good stories inside the book itself and, really, does the world need one more story about me evading encounters with bears? Of course it does! But I don’t want to blow my bear-wad just yet. So instead, I’m writing the Book Announcement about a Life Decision that really fails to put those bear encounters in perspective. It begins, as many stories do, with the words “If my dad can ride his bike over those mountains, then it can’t be that hard.” I had just moved to Durango, Colorado, to live off my leftover student loans. You would not recognize me then. You also would not recognize me now, unless we have met before. But I was a different person before saddling up for the Iron Horse Bicycle Classic eleven years ago. I had long been a dedicated indoorsman. As activities go, a weekly Uno night was more my cup of tea. Hell, cups of tea were my cup of tea. The annual Iron Horse ride covers the fifty-mile stretch of highway between the mining and railroad towns of Durango and Silverton, while scaling a pair of ten-thousand-foot mountain passes and informally racing a steam locomotive. I had mounted a bicycle exactly twice since I was eight years old, and put the bike in actual motion only one of those times. But my dear father had participated in the Iron Horse ride for years, despite being, biologically speaking, old. And if Pops could do it, then so could I. I called him up and shared my resolution. He said, “You’re still young, dude. I think if you really put your mind to it, you can manage it. Definitely. Absolutely. No, really.” He tried to warn me about the little things, though. Things like sitting in the saddle for hours (puh-leeze! I was a veteran sitter) and leaving the house—on my bike!—for actual training rides. And, though it pains me now to admit it, I proved that you can forget how to ride a bicycle. But I had an entry fee and paternal pride on the line. I had to accomplish this feat to disprove all the people who say millennials are lazy, worthless bums destroying America, even though I’m not sure what a millennial is, exactly, or if I am one. Besides, the experience of training for the ride might provide fodder for a future Book Announcement. So by gum, I rode my bike. I rode it even though I was not a genetically-endowed cyclist with sponsored clothing. I rode it even though my blood was not made of energy gel. I rode it even though it meant consuming protein bars with experimental seasonal flavors like “gingerbread” and “adventure.” I still don’t know why so much riding was a key element of an efficient training regimen, exactly, other than it showed Pops that I was serious about this. He couldn’t understand why I had been an English major, but riding a bike, he got. And as we all know, future-President Oprah’s readers are suckers for a good father-son bonding story. As I kept riding, I earned a fresh perspective on my new home from the seat of my thickening bum calluses. Bicycling isn’t really about the chain grease or the space-age food. It’s about communing with our wider environment. It’s about making sure I beat Pops across the finish line. And it’s about finalizing my growth as a human being by the time I was twenty-seven years old. On the day of the Iron Horse, when I careened down the last mountain into Silverton, I emerged from the cocoon of early life and young adulthood into this blazing mega- butterfly you read today. No more youthful insecurities. No more “living and learning” or “emotional development.” If I could conquer mountains, then I was basically an expert on life. I wrote my first installment for what became my Fool’s Gold column in order to commemorate my triumph. I soon branched out from bicycling to tackle the defining topics of our day, topics that required a specialized brand of maturity, insight, and a really poor sense of smell: gender and masculinity in the modern era, family holidays, other people’s dogs, finding friendship as a hermit who dislikes people, and so on and so forth. Then someone had the bright idea to rework those adventures into a book. That someone was me. You can call me Zach Hively, because that is my name. And I’d like to introduce you to my forthcoming book, now up for grabs on Kickstarter: Call Me Zach Hively Because That Is My Name. For all these years, both of you, my darling readers, have had to wait weeks for my next column. Now there is no more waiting. In one extended bathroom visit, you can join me as I open my home to friends, apply to be a festival queen, and travel to St. Louis so you don’t have to. Each of these adventures improved me—enhanced me, even—like a radioactive spider bite. But even conquering mountains on a bicycle that weighs less than a hedonist’s guilt—even delivering a column (on deadline, mind you) for several years—did not quite prepare me for writing this Book Announcement.
No, that took actually sitting down (thanks, bicycle training!) and writing it. I’m happy that I could reward your time and, ideally, the full price you are about to pay with a guiding light by which to understand this book’s Unifying Themes and Greater Purposes. If you figure out what that light is, please let me know, so I can include it in future revised editions. Here are the highlights of the Kickstart campaign that goes live today:
Back Zach on Kickstarter
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By Sara Wright
Every time I think the Evening Grosbeaks are thinning out or even migrating en mass, they return. I have had a huge flock of these golden birds on my porch all winter and spring. Every morning the air is flooded with raucous finch bird song. According to many sources these beautiful birds are nomadic in southern areas but their presence here has been consistent. Irruptions (or rapid increases) of these birds in fall and winter are a common response to changing food supplies. Perhaps they stay around here because I feed them (as so many people do), but even with a stable food supply they will leave eventually. Western populations migrate to higher altitudes to breed sometime this spring and then return to the lowlands during the winter. In the Northeast, where I come from, the summer arrival of the grosbeaks is an event not to be missed because they migrate north to breed and are gone again within three months. In the last few years the bountiful flocks have been absent, having been replaced by a few breeding pairs. No one knows why Grosbeak numbers are in decline but apparently this downward trend holds for much of the US. While the pattern of decline is clear, the potential causes are murky unless one factors in the usual, Climate Change and insecticide use. I do know that these finches have adapted to having a regular supply of sunflower seed by growing a larger beak. Evening Grosbeaks interest me because they are an example of a bird that migrates in a limited way, (altitudinal) and one who also makes a long distance seasonal flight. Migration is the patterned movement from one place to another that occurs in birds, mammals, fish, reptiles, amphibians, insects and crustaceans. Migration may also occur at the cellular level. Migration can occur seasonally or just once in a lifetime. Birds like grosbeaks migrate to find food and to reproduce, but I can’t find any data on why these birds move from Abiquiu to higher altitudes to breed when there are extensive cottonwood canopies around here and a regular food supply, so there must be other unknown factors. It’s important to distinguish between birds that migrate seasonally for food and reproduction from those who are forced to leave one place for another because of human induced habitat loss, and Climate Change. Is it possible that one of the reasons the grosbeaks move to the mountainous ranges is to escape the heat? Like scientists, I have been intrigued by migration because we know so little about how birds and animals know what they know, and because, unfortunately, whatever capabilities animals have developed over millennia are also being interrupted in ways that we can barely comprehend. Multitudes of studies indicate that 1,800 of the 10,000 remaining bird migrating species probably use a wide variety of mechanisms to navigate, including the stars, the sun, olfactory (chemical) cues, internal circadian rhythms that change in response to the seasons, and Earth's magnetic field. Controversial field theory may also offer an explanation. But the point is, we don’t really know. The mysteries of bird migration continue to haunt me with questions I can’t answer. Here are a few examples of the ways bird migration has changed over the years: 1. Evening grosbeak migration patterns are shifting. 2. Some Canadian geese migrate seasonally; others remain in some states year-round. 3. Lesser black-backed gulls began appearing regularly in the New Jersey area in the 1970s, and are now fairly common winter visitors. 4. Sandhill cranes that used to migrate to Florida for the winter have stable winter populations in the state of Tennessee, and this year we had whole flocks of these birds who spent the winter here rather than moving further south. 5. Not all Rufous hummingbirds migrate to the tropics for the winter. Some are now flying south to areas like Alabama and Florida to remain there for the winter. 6. Barn swallows habitually migrated to South America during the winter but at present they also nest there in addition to moving north to breed. We may not know how migration works, but we do know the patterns of migration are changing and that Climate Change is a reality. My fervent hope is that somehow most species, who are all our “elders” – humans, after all have only been around for 200,000 years - (plants for 450 million years, animals for 350 million years) - may possess strategies that we can’t even imagine to survive the damage that we have brought upon all living things, including ourselves. Long live the Free Press! Zach Hively You don’t need me to tell you that printed newspapers are, if not a dying industry, at least a much-reduced one. I mean, if cassette tapes are making a comeback, there’s some hope for newsprint yet. And of course there’s digital news. But actual newspapers—the kind that smudge your fingers black, the kind you can rest your cereal bowl on, the kind you start your fires with—they’re an endangered species. Which really, really sucks. That said, some of the best of what remains are what we loosely call “alternative newspapers.” The ones who look at what social media did to the news cycle (hint: waiting for tomorrow morning is too long) and said, “Oh, yeah? What if we make you wait AN ENTIRE WEEK?” These papers (even if they’re online) are my bread and butter. Maybe because they understand the value of taking time to think about what you write before you publish it? Maybe because they’re desperate for content? Nobody knows. But my Fool’s Gold column (and so many other, more brilliant, columns) exists because of venues like the Abiquiú News and the Durango Telegraph. And, until earlier this year, the Four Corners Free Press, who said: “I’ll see your once a week and raise you to ONCE A MONTH.” The Free Press and its editor, Gail Binkly, took a chance on me back oh roundabout 2014, give or take, when yours truly was but a fledgling columnist with a part-time job processing business licenses and parking tickets. (Oh, the things people will write on their checks for parking fines; this might be a story for another day.)
Ten years in, and I rewarded their kindness by pushing my monthly deadline later and later and later. Is this what ultimately killed the Free Press? The world may never know, because Gail is too polite to say so. But in celebration of all the Free Press stood for—actual long-form journalism, diverse opinions, and a ridiculous wealth of columnists, but most especially two entire spreads of tastefully annotated crime notes recounting just how many people had been banned from Walmart that month—some friends of the newspaper put together a party for Gail and crew. They assembled a booklet of farewells from those of us fortunate enough to see our names on the paper’s contributors list. This was my contribution, which they mistakenly included in the final cut. Ode to a NewspaperWhen you really stop to think about it, “expression” is such a strange word. We use it to mean “share our thoughts through writing, or interpretive dance, or inchoate screaming,” but really it means “to take what is inside of us and put it outside of us.” This can mean articulating our emotions. It can also mean relieving the pressure on our dogs’ anal glands. Using the full spectrum of the term, I cannot truly express—at least not in words—what it means to have been published by Gail Binkly and the Four Corners Free Press a dozen, sometimes even ten, times a year, every year, for the past decade. For starters, the fact that it took me so long to drive the Free Press into the ground is a testament to the resilience and delusion of the editorial staff. My Fool’s Gold column has buried at least two other independent news organizations, both within single-digit years, and neither of them even had print costs. But more than that, Gail and the Free Press stood for integrity. Which is why it’s so incredible they kept nominating my column for legitimate journalism awards, as evidenced by my actually winning some of them. This has yet to turn into wealth or glamorous invites. But for this, I forgive everyone involved. Here’s something heartfelt I can express, though, without the use of paper towels or latex gloves: The crime notes always made me feel better about myself. Fill the void that your favorite newspapers have left in your heart: Subscribe to Zach Hively and Other Mishaps! Zach’s Substack is free. The free stuff today will remain free tomorrow. Someday, he might offer additional stuff. Zach+, as it were. You can tell Zach that you value his work by pledging a future paid subscription to additional stuff. You won't be charged unless he enables payments, and he’ll give a heads-up beforehand. Reprinted from March 2019
By Sara Wright We are approaching the spring equinox, historically one of my favorite times of year. The wheel is turning as the sun’s light grows more brilliant and the sunrise occurs further to the northeast. The night sky is sparkling with cracked stars. Venus shines low in the east… The other notable change is that, here anyway, a pair of White - winged doves are starting to sing at dawn. I can also hear other dove songs in the distance. When the couple retires to the Russian olive after feasting on cracked corn, Lily b, my African (European) Collared dove peers out at them. The melodious “who who who hoooh” sound or one of its variations (depending on the species) is music to our ears. My love affair with doves began when I was a child. I used to draw and paint stylized white doves on scraps of paper after watching them flutter to the ground to feed outside my grandmother’s window. As an adult I often had a hundred (Mourning) doves feeding on seed that I scattered outside my back door. At a Jungian conference in Assisi, Italy in the 80’s I was serenaded from dawn to dusk by thousands of doves and pigeons including pure white doves. When my father died suddenly, soon after one of these trips, a white dove appeared with the Mourning doves and stayed around for exactly one day before disappearing as mysteriously as s/he came. That same night my father’s brother, my uncle, bit into a tiny stone dove that was hidden in his pasta; that white dove - stone remains on his son’s mantelpiece to this day. I didn’t know until recently that the white dove is a Ring neck dove mutation. The spring after my father’s death I acquired a dove of my own, an African collared dove who is closely related to the European Collared/Ring neck and White winged doves who live around here. Lily b has been a free flying house bird for 28 years. He has traveled back and forth across country a few times in the back of the car always without a cage. He has also made a number of excursions into the wild but he always returns by his own volition. He has also survived three mates, two of which lived a normal life span of 8-10 years like our wild doves do here… Like me, Lily b does a lot of bird watching. He spends most mornings these days perched on a basket or windowsill peering out at the White winged doves. The White winged doves do not favor Lily’s company as he discovered while flying around outdoors one morning early last summer. He had been enjoying a sun bath on the open porch before making a brief foray into the trees. Undaunted, Lily continues to converse with his avian relatives with great enthusiasm. Lily b is a very democratic bird! White winged Doves live in dense, thorny forests, streamside woodlands, deserts full of cactus and, more recently, urban and suburban areas of the southern U.S. They tend to breed in the interiors of forests rather than near the edges. White-winged doves now breed as far north as Oklahoma so the species is moving northward and the breeding range extends south to Panama and east to Cuba. Wherever they range White winged doves prefer places where nesting habitat is interspersed with feeding habitat, like grain fields or desert cactus communities. In the winter, White-winged doves are found throughout most of their breeding range as well as in the southeastern United States, and some individuals wander widely across the continent. The White-Winged dove eats mostly grains and other agricultural crops like wheat, sunflower, milo, corn, and safflower. They also eat fruits and large seeds and seem predisposed toward large seeds perhaps because of their large bills. In some desert areas this dove often feeds on the fruits of cactus, and visits their flowers for nectar. White winged doves are important pollinators of the giant saguaro cactus, a fact that fascinates me because I don’t think of doves as pollinators. They also commonly feed above ground level on berries and raised bird feeders although they won’t feed on my porch; I have to throw corn over the railing. Like many birds, these doves consume small stones and sand to help with digestion. They also eat snails as a protein source and bone fragments for calcium. Males choose the nesting territory while the females select the specific nest site, preferring a protected tree branch located in the shade. They gravitate towards woodlands, particularly along streams. Around here during the summer they prefer the Cottonwoods. The male gathers twigs and brings them to the female, who constructs the nest over a couple of days. Made mostly of sticks, the nest also may have weeds, grasses or mosses arranged in a flimsy bowl about 4 inches across. Doves in general are very casual nest builders and nests rarely survive one season. Although the rule is that two white eggs are laid and gestated for about three weeks these doves may have a couple of broods a year. White winged Doves walk along tree branches and on the ground; they fly in a swift and straight path. Courting and nesting males will occasionally strike bills and slap wings with each other, but they mostly defend their perches and nests by using an aggressive call or flailing their wings and tail. Males perform courtship flights, spiraling up into the sky and then back to the branch they started from in a stiff-winged glide. They also bow, puff up their necks, or fan their tails to entice females to mate; White winged Doves are monogamous. When a predator comes to call they may feign a broken wing to lead the intruder away. By far the most dangerous predator to these doves is man and in this part of the Southwest White winged doves were hunted almost to extinction. Today their overall populations are still declining because of habitat loss. I was surprised to read that most of those nesting in the Southwest move south in fall because we seem to have a stable, though modest year round population, perhaps because we feed our birds or, more likely, because of Climate Change. Migration, when it occurs, is early in both seasons, most birds arriving by March and leaving in September. Each year I am on alert for the first coos from the local population of doves because for me they usher one of nature’s certainties, namely that spring is on the way even if snow or silver frost covers the grasses in the field. The flutter of dove wings and melodious cooing creates a symphony I wouldn’t want to live without. Lily b and I find a deep pleasure in each moment that these birds grace our yard. Every year, we celebrate the day Dave Barry met me. By Zach Hively They say you should never meet your idols, that they can’t possibly live up to your expectations of them—they’re just people, after all; people like you, with hopes and dreams and families and problems of their own, people who just want to get home as fast as possible because don’t we all deserve to go to the grocery store without complete strangers interrupting our attempts to remember what all was on the list we left stuck on the fridge? However, they never say the same thing about never meeting your adoring fans. You should always meet the people who idolize you. There’s nothing better for your ego than being recognized in public and having your picture taken by people you have never met before and probably will never meet again. I know, because of that time I went out of my way to meet one man trying to make a go of it. This was 2006. Actual printed newspapers were still a thing. Yet, while the writing was still on the paper, it was also on the wall—and one journalist, if you can call him that, saw it coming. Let’s call him “Dave” because that is his name. Dave had been writing absolutely, critically serious social commentary for the Miami Herald for more than twenty years, yet he had failed to receive any recognition more widespread than national syndication and a Pulitzer Prize and, I don’t know, a dozen or so books with names like Boogers Are My Beat. But, knowing that the newspaper and fire-starter industry as we knew it was on its way out—or maybe just because he was ready for something different—Dave retired his weekly column and set out to co-author a series of novels for younger readers. This was a bold career move, because it was predicated on the gamble that books were not going to follow newspapers into obsolescence. You want to know why else this was a bold career move? Dave and his friend Ridley were not only writing books for younger readers; they were writing officially-sanctioned fanfiction. Specifically, prequels to the famous Peter Pan stories created by J. M. Barrie and Disney. You want to know why this was even bolder? The publishers decided that Dave, whose entire readership was in the United States, and Ridley should go to England to promote this book—the very same England where the original Peter Pan stories were set. This would be like you and your bar-buddy deciding to fly to Tatooine to reboot Star Wars, or like flying to Coruscant to reboot Star Wars. In short: Dave, brave though we can imagine him to be, might have been feeling just a little bit out of his element. We can suppose. We are not omniscient narrators here, and our legal counsel advises us not to presume to know his feelings. So we will continue to speculate, vaguely, and most definitely not definitively. This is where I come in. I had been aware of Dave’s work for some time. I had not reached out to him to voice my support—that can be unnerving to an author contemplating a career change, or any career at all. But I would (anonymously, of course) submit occasional wacky news entries for consideration to his blog. This was in the days before we writerly types were concerned with creating “content”: Dave’s blog, while it was indeed a content generator, served me much more as a procrastination device at the time, and I was happy to lend a hand. It was on this very blog that Dave (or his assistant, judi with a lowercase j) announced that Dave and Ridley would be visiting the UK for a media tour for their first book, Peter and the Starcatchers. Lo and behold, I was in the UK too! I am a US American, and in my view, the entire UK is about the geographic space of Delaware. It didn’t matter where in the UK these two would be promoting their book. I could reach it from Norwich within half a day. We were practically in the same neighborhood. So I reached out to judi to inquire how I might best lend my support to Dave. She wrote back (and I could tell she was barely containing her excitement at my inquiry) that this media tour was largely stopping at BBC radio programs for interviews, and there really weren’t any public events per se, because no one (well, one person) on the entire island knew who Dave was. But … there might be one opportunity, she said. Dave and Ridley were scheduled to sign stock at Harrods in London on St. Patrick’s Day. This was not a public reading, but if I went and asked around, it was possible some clerk might let me in the back room to say hello. Now, this meant I would have to wake up early (on St. Patrick’s Day, no less) and while everyone else on this college campus (not an exaggeration) would be drinking Guinness at 8 am (also not an exaggeration), I would have to catch a train to London and then find a cabbie who knew where this bookstore called Harrods was located. Worth it. So I did. The cabbie and I had a bit of talking at cross purposes when I arrived in London, me not knowing that Harrods was not in fact a bookstore and him not knowing that I was, in fact, in certain very small circles, famous. But we worked through our differences and he dropped me off at the most ridiculous department store I had ever seen. (Considering that my most ridiculous comparison was probably Coronado Mall in Albuquerque, this may say more about me than about Harrods—though Coronado Mall certainly lacks the equivalent of Princess Diana paraphernalia near the escalators.) I navigated the labyrinth until stumbling into the bookish section, where I asked after Dave and Ridley, and the bookseller pointed me to a small table set up with small stacks of books and two very real flesh-and-blood men standing behind it with no one around. This was not a stock signing after all. This was a public event. And were it not for me saving their faces, they would be signing to a whole lot of nobody. I picked up three books and, playing it cool, asked the two men to sign them for me. (One of them looked vaguely like Dave’s one-inch-square syndicated headshot, which made me confident I was in the right place.) The first one was for a friend back home. The second was for my sister. The final book, I said, was for me. “What’s your name?” Dave asked. “Zach,” I said. (Had I known then, like I do now, that my forthcoming book would be called Call Me Zach Hively Because That Is My Name, I might have better utilized this moment for product placement purposes.) Dave started to write in my copy of his book. Then he stopped, stone cold. “Wait,” he said. “Zach. Are you the Zach who judi was talking with?” “I am,” I said. “Zach!” he said, and he shook my hand with a great deal of warmth and vigor. “judi is not going to believe you came. I have to take your picture to prove that you’re real.” Of course, I let him. It was the most gracious thing I could do, considering the moment. Dave’s “CrapCam” was legendary among his blog readers, and true to form, the resulting headshot was, indeed, pretty crappy. By this point, one other person had wandered into the book room, and by all appearances had decided to buy a book to rescue these poor American authors from the even weirder American pinning them to their station. You can see her in my CrapCam photo. But we had made a connection, Dave and me—and we conversed enthusiastically for several minutes about, oh, you know, this and that. It would be rude of me to spill. Eventually, he finished signing my book. “For Zach, my personal idol,” he wrote—thus providing me with the best future book blurb I would ever not be able to use, because my legal counsel advises me not to without Dave’s explicit permission. I felt we could have talked all day. Part of me wanted to make all Dave’s and Ridley’s UK dreams come true by inviting them out for a Guinness—if we were very lucky, the pubs would still have the grotesquely large fuzzy Guinness hats, on which you could pin a button for every pint you consumed—but I also felt, as the celebrity, it was my best course of action to make a clean exit, so these two fine men would not feel any pressure to alter their media tour for the day. So we shook hands again, and I let Dave and Ridley sign the other person’s book, and I wound my way back to a return train to Norwich. That could be the end of that. But this is why you should always meet your idolizers: they just might inspire you in return. Several years later, I embarked on my own serious journalism career, writing serious social commentary for very serious newspapers (one of the very few still in print!) and websites. I dropped Dave and judi one more email—and why not—just to thank them for that day in Harrods and the inspiration it provided me for my own bold, reckless, even senseless career trajectory. “Congrats!” Dave wrote back. “Your Fellow Humor Professional, Dave.” Dave is not dead yet, yet still his inspiration lives on in me—for better or (more likely) for worse. My forthcoming book, Call Me Zach Hively Because That Is My Name, compiles several years of my award-winning Fool’s Gold column, available in one place and with a legitimate cover for the first time. The publisher, Casa Urraca Press, is launching the book on Kickstarter in April. (You can sign up now to be notified the moment it goes live—giving you the best shot at early-bird access to advance reader copies.) Other rewards include exclusive hardcover editions, giving books to libraries in support of (or to the detriment of) literacy, and joining me in cahoots for a Fool’s Gold column.
After all, it’s readers like you who make our dreams come true. Maybe someday, some of you can be my personal idols. Thanks for reading Zach Hively and Other Mishaps! Subscribe for free to receive new weekly posts (including Fool’s Gold and poetry) and thereby support my work. By Jessica Rath When I saw the announcement in the Abiquiú News about Ryan Dominguez performing at the Abiquiú Inn, it released a flood of memories. Several lifetimes ago, I was a volunteer with the Abiquiú Volunteer Fire Department, as were Ryan and his wife Jeanette. For a few years, our service time overlapped. The fire station was still in a rickety, small building above the village; the new station at the current site was still under construction. I had no idea that Ryan was a musician, that he played the guitar and other instruments. It’s strange, isn’t it – we regularly see people at meetings and events, but we know next to nothing about them. I wanted to remedy this and asked Ryan for an interview, to which he kindly agreed. Ryan grew up in Abiquiú, he had eleven siblings and was the youngest. He joined the military in 1992, and when he returned from service he went to school and got a degree in Fine Arts, and another degree in Criminal Justice. Two diametrically opposite subject matters, at least in my eyes! How did this come about, I asked him? “I'd rather use what I really love to do as a hobby. And then get a job to support me and my family. I play and I draw; it's more of a hobby for me”, he told me. Well, that makes sense; it’s not easy to make a living as a young artist. Having to worry about making enough money can take the fun out of one’s creative striving. Keeping the artistic work separate from one’s professional career certainly holds the stress-level down. Over 30 years ago, Ryan met his wife, Jeanette, in Espanola. They went on a date and have been together ever since. They have a daughter and two grandchildren, a granddaughter who is sixteen and a grandson who is nine years old. Artistic talent runs in the family: both his daughter and his granddaughter have beautiful voices. Jeanette and Ryan sing in the church choir. And their grandson takes regular drawing lessons from Ryan, because that’s what he’s passionate about; he wants to learn how to draw. But first of all, I want to know more about music and guitar-playing. How did this come about? “When I grew up in Abiquiú, there was nothing to do here, especially for a young person. So it was really boring for me here. There was nothing to do. But there was a guitar in the house, and my mom told me to pick it up and learn how to play it when I was bored. ‘I don't want to hear that you're bored – if you're bored, pick up the guitar and learn’ – that’s what she told me. So I started playing the guitar, and then I joined the choir when I was eight years old. I was playing guitar in the church choir.” “That's how I started off, and I play other instruments. I play the piano. Another guitar-like instrument I play is called the Charango. It has ten strings. It almost sounds like a mandolin”. I had never heard of the Charango, so I looked it up. It is an instrument belonging to traditional Andean folk music and highly celebrated in South America. Close in size to a ukulele, its sound is similar to a classic guitar or a mandolin. It dates back to the 16th century! Maybe Ryan will bring his charango along when he performs at the Abiquiú Inn. I’m sure people would love to see it. “I play the guitar, the piano, and a number of other instruments. When I was much younger, I used to play in different bands. I was the lead guitarist for many bands here in Northern New Mexico, playing New Mexico style, country, oldies, and rock music. This became a little boring, because I played it all the time. I was actually looking for more of a challenge. When I was taking classes at the college, I took a flamenco guitar class and that's when I was hooked. I started playing, and then teaching; I still teach guitar. Now that I'm older, I just play as a soloist, I play at different venues. I do private parties, special events, restaurants, weddings – things like that”. Flamenco! I had just read that it had been added to the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, a part of UNESCO. It’s a contemporary and traditional musical style associated with southern Spain, especially Andalusia. “Flamenco is a type of music that’s not played very often in northern New Mexico. There's a northern New Mexican style of music which doesn't include the Spanish guitar type. I just wanted something different. I wanted to do something completely different, something that not very many people are doing. And a lot of people are unable to do it, because it takes so much practice. And so, after many years of experience I’m able to play that style of music”.
“I call my style Spanish Guitar, it is all different Latin-based music. So it can be music from Mexico, or it can be from South America, from New Mexico, from Spain. I also play many Latin based rhythms. And always with a nylon string acoustic or acoustic/electric guitar. When I played with bands I used a steel string electric guitar. I went from big stages to more intimate settings. I like what I do now. I know my music. I can do whatever I want to do with my music, because it's just me. I don't have to get a consensus with the band, so I have more freedom now”. Most of it is self-taught. “When I was in third grade, at the age of eight, I took my first guitar class. I learned a few chords and a few rhythms, and after that, I just practiced and learned whatever I could.” “It's interesting; now there is YouTube, right? You can learn almost anything on YouTube. But back then, I used to have to listen to a cassette tape, listen to it, learn it, rewind the cassette tape, listen to it again, until I learned what I wanted to learn. It was a lot more work back then to learn”. Indeed. Many young people today don’t have any idea what a cassette tape is. It belongs with rotary phones, VHS tapes, and incandescent light bulbs: some of us grew up with it, but it has been replaced by something more modern. The pace of these replacements seems to be accelerating. “Right now I just play gigs, and usually I get referred to by word of mouth. So, if I play at the Inn, they'll post it in the Abiquiu News or at the Inn. I don't advertise much about myself because I think if people have heard me, they will refer me to others by word of mouth.Then you know that whoever hires you, really wants you because they have heard that you do a great job. And so they appreciate that as do I”. “And here’s another thing about my music: you may know the song I'm playing, but I'm always making it my own. I don't play like anybody else. And if you hear me play a song tonight, and I play the same song tomorrow, it's going to sound different because it's all dependent on my mood. Depending on my mood I can adjust to what I'm playing and it's never the same. Even if you've heard the song three times, it's never going to be the same because it's just what I'm feeling that night, what I decided to do with the music”. “I also try to set a mood, I can make you feel a certain way, just by the way I play. I can put you in a different mood. I can make you feel excited, I can make you feel calm. I can make you feel sad, or I can make you feel happy – just depending on how I'm feeling. I try to pick up on the vibes of the people that are in the room. My first songs are pretty much just normal. I listen and then, depending on what I feel in the restaurant or at the event that I'm playing, it'll drive me to play in a certain style”. Ryan plans to make a CD of Spanish music because there are only a few here. One can hear examples of Spanish music, but the performers are people from Spain. Ryan wants to add music that’s performed by someone who actually lives in New Mexico. “The guitar is my passion but I also do hyperrealism drawings. I'll show you something really quickly” – and shows me a large pencil drawing of an elephant, amazingly intricate and detailed. And then he shows me another drawing, this one is a shark. It's not done yet, but it’ll be a shark in the ocean, underwater. Both are totally beautiful. I had no idea that Ryan was so talented. How long does it take to finish one drawing, how many hours, I ask him. “The elephant took me about eight total hours. And that's with an hour here, and an hour there. I teach my grandson how to draw. I go to his house, usually every week, and I teach him how to draw because he really wants to learn. And that’s what I love: I try to teach the youth. If they want to learn drawing, I'll show them different techniques, because I want to be able to pass on something. This is also true with the music I teach”. I can’t wait to hear Ryan play at the Abiquiú Inn. He creates his music anew every time he plays, and there is an intuitive interchange with the audience. What a captivating and delightful experience. |
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