Joy Harjo's Web Log

I flew through the night from Honolulu to Atlanta, then Atlanta to Hartford/Springfield. Coming into sunrise over Georgia, my tribe's homeland always moves me. The sun always looks like blood and hope as it rises there. My driver was prompt at Bradley, friendly and took me directly to the inn. During the ride through the Connecticut/Massachusett countryside talked with J.K., another native performer and we compared recent gigs and travel stories. More travel adventures, and how to get monies due from university systems. I slept. Slept some more on a bright and beautiful spring day. Then up, continued reading and thinking about the pages of a soon-to-be-published: American Indian Literary Nationalism text, by Jace Weaver, Craig Womack and Robert Warrior with an intro from Simon Ortiz and an afterward by a Lisa Brooks and wrote more notes and wonder how I'm going to connect everything and come up with something fresh, provocative and useful. And the saxophone will have to be part of it. I'm getting the feeling that there's a disconnect with my literary audience when I speak saxophone, as if the saxophone is dirtying the equation. Literature is then no longer "pure". Adolf Sax went through hell for creating such an outrageous series of horns. They are racous, are contradictory, and speak passionately whether it's about romance, lust, or patriotism. One day the sax will be considered a Mvskoke traditional instrument. Try practicing in a hotel....Tonight, laid off the horn, worked out in the inn-gym, walked around the square, then brought dinner up to my room to read, think some more. Enough with thinking. Go for the realm beyond the small, human mind. Everything is there.

Good night.
Good night.
dee daaaaah de dah de dah weyyy oh aye