Documentarian/Cinematorapher – John Lowen
Born in Schenectady, NY, Mr. Lowen has accredited some marvelous endeavors. He is a graduate of the City College of New York and holds a degree in Cinematography. In 1985 he attended Hunter College where he received a Masters in Social Work. He is a man who is willing to confront the problems of the past and is unwavering in his pursuit of global connection. In short, Mr. Lowen is very much a Global Realist, looking viscously to find the answers to the many questions which arise throughout a life dedicated to creativity. We spoke with Mr. Lowen about his experiences working alongside the mentally ill, his work as a documentarian and his advocation for global understanding.
Listen to our entire conversation below:
Full Transcript:
Charlie: Welcome back, folks. We are having another instalment of United Planet Radio and this
week we have Mr. John Gordon Lowen.
John: Lowen. It’s mispronounced all the time so John Lowen.
Charlie: Lowen. I apologise. Welcome.
John: Thank you. Wonderful to be here.
Charlie: could you give us a quick background on yourself and kind of how you got yourself to where
you’re sitting right now. You can go into as much detail.
John: Well, some people are great dancers and I’m a great stumbler and I just stumbled and failed so
well in so many things that it freed me from having to be the conventional success. I come from an
upper middle-class family where they announced the birth of their future sons; the lawyer, the
doctor, the whatever. I wasn’t destined for success but that wasn’t my real destiny. My real destiny
was to get outside of the world I came from and to come back in here with an outsider’s perspective.
So a little about the product of some.
Charlie: Yeah.
John: I didn’t squander in all my daddy’s money or lay thousands of women to waste, but I was
certainly was outside of the box. It was very painful at first, but I’m sixty-seven now and by the time
I hit fifty, I realized all these difficulties were actually the key part of my training. I guess I would
describe myself as someone who would’ve fit in twelve-hundred years ago a lot better. I’m a bit of a
shaman. I hear the voices of my ancestors and they feel very real and you’re not just talking to me,
you’re talking to a tribe and kind of how we see things and took quite a while for us to work that out.
Some people who got on this journey learned the backways of psychiatric exercise, right? Hearing
voices and they can’t make it out. There’s a thin line between brilliance and lunacy and same thing
with humour and tragedy. Someone slips on the banana in a slapstick comedy is funny, right?
Someone slips on the banana peel and cracks their head open is a tragic film and theatre. I think
learning about how to negotiate those lines is what my line of my work is about [inaudible] used as a
[inaudible] in resolving those so I’ve worked with psychiatric social worker in extreme situations in
jails, in prisons, and with murderers, and rapists, and paedophiles. And people say, “Oh, my god!
How do you work with these people? You’re a saint.” No, they just have something to teach with a
lot of you.
Charlie: Right
John: I had a heart attacked ten years ago and I was so invested in helping the disenfranchised and I
think a lot of that is from my profound relationship with my father and escaped the holocaust in his
twenties but he actually brought the holocaust with him wherever he went. So I needed to be
working with people who were connected to danger at some point to understand my father and so
when I had a heart attack they didn’t know if I was going to live or die. I’m looking up at my wife
with needles in my arms and I said, “Baby, you got to talk to the doctor and find out when I go back
to work.” And she looks at me says, “Sweetheart, you’re not going back to work. I’m going back to
work and you’re going to have to figure out what you’re going to do with your life.” And I didn’t
know what to do. All I knew how to do is to get people talking. That’s all I really know how to do so I
wound up creating a documentary. The first documentary I created won an award and I met Clint
Eastwood and had kind of a rite of passage.
Charlie: And what was that documentary called?
John: One Day in Clarksdale.
Charlie: And what’s that about?
John: It’s about a blues-recording session in Clarksdale, Mississippi that was the first and the last
recording session since 1950 but I just simply mystically happened to be there on the day that it
happened and all over it was wild coincidences. People just welcomed me and said, “Come on up.
We’re doing a recording session. Come on up. And I did, but my approach is not to script anything
that — I guess it’s a little bit of a modern version of one of the great sculptors— forgot what his name
is but he was famous. Either Michelangelo or something like that and he said, “How do you get
these brilliant ideas?” and I said, “I don’t get either.” Because they’re already there, I just removed
the part of the marble that doesn’t belong and I just think everybody is brilliant and [inaudible 04:39]
today. So around the camera and found a part with people.
Charlie: So what happened?
John: We showed them that. I’m not into sort of exposing anybody other than our brilliance because
I want someone to expose my brilliance that’s the only way that we can survive.
Charlie: Wow, that’s great and you started at the City College of New York, correct, in
cinematography?
John: Well, no. I started by dropping out of five colleges before I got the courage to tell my dad,
“Pop, you’re a great professor in teaching, but I’m really not that interested.” I really wanted to
meet Ray Charles but I didn’t know how to do it. So he is a big influence, but in the world that my
father came from, having escaped the holocaust, he didn’t believe in God or religion but he thought
education was salvation and it was, but not for me. I had to get my education in a different way.
And after I wore myself up, by the time I was thirty something and had tried to start a record
company in Holland and failed splendidly and was so depressed and just working for less than
minimum wage at a — what they called a [inaudible 5:49] at that time. These were people who had
disabilities and I qualified, I was so depressed, I was disabled. I figured how bad could college be?
So I went back to get my undergraduate work in the cinema. And then I realized if I go out to
Hollywood, do I really want to carry someone’s cables for ten years, be able to hold the camera to
have someone say “Well, maybe you know this kid’s got something” so I used film-making as a
therapeutic tool socially. That’s where at the City College, not City College, but undergraduate for
social work which is part of the CUNY Assessment.
Charlie: Great. And then from there you moved to where exactly?
John: Well, I worked as a psychiatric social worker and I just gravitated to the bad. Anyone that no
one else wanted to deal with, whatever was considered the scum of the earth.
Charlie: You wanted to be involved?
John: Yeah, but I had to hide that because I didn’t want people to think I was too weird so I kind of
put on the persona of like — “This guy murdered his mother and froze her body and cooked her and
fed her to the homeless. Sorry guys, someone’s got to take him,” and pretend my heart’s going from
my chest “I got to work with this guy.” But I said, “Alright, I’ll do it.” So that’s when double persona
began in terms of hiding. There was something in me that was being driven from history, the
unresolved history of my father and Jews and our relationship with the world, and that’s when I
began to realize there was something different going on and what came from the suburban world,
my world, and that actually would have been a better fit twelve-hundred years ago and made us a
man, wise man, I’m more one of those guys that I was so ashamed that I didn’t fit into my parent’s
expectations. It took me about forty years to make a little peace with myself
Charlie: Wow, that’s amazing, it sounds like that’s a common theme for a lot of people.
John: Oh yeah.
Charlie: And your work with the mental institution was teaching and kind of—
John: Well, you know, just like a therapist, they had some psychotic break. They’re in the hospital
and the parents are, you know, totally freaked out, and they don’t want to believe that their
precious Jimmy could have a mental illness, or could have that terrible word schizophrenia. So they
don’t want to listen to anything so they get hospitalized about three times, then about the third time
they realize “Gee, maybe this is the golden way”. And then they are interacting more effectively
with the support system and they might come to an outpatient clinic, which is where I work. You
just help them to find a— I mean, whether we’re sick, healthy, whatever, we’re still these human
beings trying to find passion in our lives to make it not be boring, but exciting and everybody wants
to be excited about their life. Whether you’re a murderer in terms of what you do, or a saint,
everybody wants the same thing. I’m not making light about murder or killing or anything, but we
have a lot more in common with people that we find disgusting than we might think.
Charlie: Yeah, we’re a lot more similar than we are different. Yeah, that’s amazing and are you
currently working on— do you have any projects in the works right now? Or what’s going on
currently with you?
John: Oh, yeah. Well, Oudou and I are working on some projects.
Charlie: Oh, that’s great.
John: Yeah, we did a short documentary called Healing the African Diaspora.
Charlie: I spoke about that last week with Oudou.
John: And I was just fascinated by black culture for a lot of reasons and white people have been
fascinated about black people for a long time some ways in a healthy way that interaction
strengthens both, other times in ways it was destructive. People getting what they wanted, people
weren’t transparent or clear about. Oudou and I were talking about this morning on the way in, how
do we know when someone is actually giving something? People are helping, but are they helping
themselves manage their guilt, are they helping themselves to deal with the chaos in their life, are
they helping themselves to deal with their fear of not knowing how to go for it and move barriers of
another culture that we unconsciously admire. It’s a slippery slope, you don’t want to just talk about
that little issue? Okay, we’ll just add reference there so that was a film that we made just kind of
looking at the dance between black and white without guilt or blame just trying to understand it.
We are interacting with each other without knowing each other for a long time. Plus my queen, my
wife, she’s African-American, Cherokee, and Irish, and you love people, when people love each
other, a lot more is accessible so it’s like I’m privileged to fish in her psyche like that. I guess that’s
the real thing is that I’m a student and my wife [inaudible 11:03]
Carlie: That’s great. That’s very interesting stuff and you spent some time in Argentina, I
understand. Can you go in to detail?
John: Well, this had more to do with— I was working at Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center and I was
borne some awesome work. There was someone that had killed a mother and of course that creates
a white elephant in the room, people just don’t laugh at you. His family wouldn’t want to talk to him
and they would give him like once in a month or three months they would let him off a few and I
convinced him to let me talk to the parents, the father, the uncles, and I cultivated quite a
relationship with them and the culminating in this family that was torn apart actually, they need to
become close and just accepting that this tragedy has happened and a lot of times the problem is
not what happened, but we can’t accept that it actually happened. My brother who I had cherished
and looked up to killed my mother, couldn’t have happened, but guess what, it did happen and it’s
not about acceptance of the thing, it’s just we got to be able to accept things without passive
judgment. So I’m just elated because I’m getting the adulation I always wanted. I did this
miraculous thing, this impossible situation of a family, now they’re talking and the guy is doing
better. And here’s this little boy saying at the back of my head that says, “Oh, great wise man. Oh,
healer who brings together the disenfranchised how come you can’t tolerate being in the same room
with your brother for more than five minutes?” So it was like a slap and then shortly thereadter I got
this offer to Argentina but I wasn’t even thinking about on the website but doesn’t this sound kind of
synchronistic because when I talked about my situation, why can’t I get along like I do now, why
couldn’t I at that time? Well, it wasn’t just my brother and me, there was also another one, the
holocaust. And Argentina is where the Nazis went after the war and Jews so we were stuck together
there, like hey, that’s perfect. I had a chance to meet some Japanese people that I — I had done a
lot of multicultural work and until you got a sense of self success is very scary, but when people start
to say, “I heard about you.” Koreans invited me to work with them. It would make me nervous
because I had not had gone into the conventional rule of an intelligent, young man from a nice
community. My sense of self was I much more comfortable being the disappointment than the
great success so just in my defensiveness I would say, “What you getting for it.” And they say,
“What’s your problem? You tell me what you need.” And I really got scared. I said, “Well, it’s not
just the money, but you wouldn’t want me.” And then I would say, “Well, the only way I’m going to
do it is you’re going to have to let me live in your house, I’m going to have to meet your mother.”
“Oh, I can’t do that.” Just because of social paradox but my insulting had a sensitivity and an
intelligence behind it so eventually I was just off in Argentina. There was some Japanese
businessmen that I had insulted saying, “You really aren’t interested in the culture you go to serve.”
“What are you talking about?” “Do you want to help? No, you don’t. You just want to show your
Japanese boys back home that you’re better than them. You’re just using Argentina.” And they said,
“Oh, you’re right. Thank you, John-san.” Then other people say, “Why do you let him insult you like
that?” And then five years later, they come back and they say, “Mr. John, I thought about what you
said and you’re right.” And so right around that time that I had the insight with my brother that
even though I’m this great healer, I do not know how to talk to my own brother that I share the
same room with. This opportunity came where I could be with the unreconciled white elephants
that dance between Jews and Jews which defines so much of us. That was the force guiding so many
other things, you know. When we get past the tip of the iceberg, there is something larger that is
really directing the show. We think we’re directing the show, but our conscious mind really is not
directing the show.
Charlie: That’s amazing. I guess me next question would be after speaking about all that stuff is why
do you think people feel the need to constantly go back to their demons that aren’t even related to
them?
John: Well, my point is they probably don’t. See, I think the west, we have— I look at the world this
way. One of the ancient Jewish accents is [unsure 16:10] probably did not say it right, did not know I
was Jewish til I was nineteen and I had a Bar Mitsvah at forty, but that saying the Lord is one. So if
the Lord is one and God loves us then we have to. So this is very connected in the organization.
What’s the name of this one?
Charlie: This one? United Planet.
John: United Planet so what’s the most efficient way to unite something. Well, you got to at least
get the four directions and everybody’ll hold the corner so that’s north, south, east and west. So,
north I would define as the written tradition, we’re not really dealing with the right experiences,
we’re dealing with theoretical paradox and then we write them down and that becomes very
important. See this interview isn’t that significant, but if it was written down in a book? Now it’s
recordable, it’s much more significant so that’s the north you see is the written tradition itself, and in
the south, our African roots, it’s one of the oral traditions, it’s an experience and I think about your
question about the demons — I think this is, you know what I’m talking about, this is more than a
phenomenon wrestling with the demons comes more from the modern cultures where we’ve
disconnected ourselves from direct experience and we’ve learned about life reading it. I mean for
me the crisis in my life came in my life in the third grade when they announced no more show and
tell. “We’re not going to the library, you’re not going to be read to, you’re big third-graders now and
you’re going to learn how to read on your own,” and my feeling was, “That sucks. I liked it when
they passed the book around and we shared and all that stuff,” but that doesn’t work in the written
tradition. Oudou was sharing with me experiences, stories his father told him about his grandfather.
You knew that someone was dying and they knew the day they were going to die. They said — is it
okay for me to repeat the story? Would you rather I not?
Oudou: Yeah.
John: Okay. So this is because we developed a relationship. Ten years ago, I would’ve already
blurted it out of my mouth and not even have known that I had violated something, but my point is
this without giving any specifics. Experience is very different from a conceptual and so much of what
we think in this life is really — we’re looking at the menu and we’re eating the menu and wondering
why we’re not satisfied, in the culture of the written tradition.
Charlie: Do you think technology maybe has something to do with that?
John: I think it’s not so much as technology as the scene of the crime, the unresolved business, the
ugly history of how we went from when we were all farmers to when we went to the city. It was
very the ugly. Once people went to the city, they became embarrassed by their farm brothers and
they really put them down and all that stuff so we haven’t worked that out yet. I mean that’s the
white elephant in America. The civil war is really more about agriculture in the city and the south. It
wasn’t a slavery issue, blacks didn’t really get treated any better up north than they did down south.
It just didn’t make sense to have slaves in factories so it was city versus country. In the city, they had
a really superior job than the south and all the taxes that came. The south was taxed because they
were making the most money with cotton, but all the money from that went to pay for things in the
north and the south said, “This is ridiculous. This is taxation without representation that was built
from Great Britain, but you’re just imitating Great Britain again. We’re out of here.” They got
reframed as the south is bad, they’re racist. I’ve talk a lot with older black men and say, “You know,
John. I’m more comfortable in the south because I really know where I stand. Up north, they smile
at you, but they really don’t understand you and they’re not interested.” So to answer your
question, I just think we need to give ourselves permission to experience the life and not just be
smart. The heart has an intelligence as well.
Charlie: That’s what I think everyone who has come in here has said pretty much along the same line
as that. That experience is the better education than, you know. They both go in tandem obviously,
picking up books and doing all that stuff.
John: The theoretical is helpful to guide you once you have something to guide just like I’m not in
love with art critics because they can get kind of delusional and think they’re more important than
artists. So if we can only have one — we can have both, that’s great but we’re only going to have
one — if we only have art critics and no artists, it’s meaningless.
Charlie: I used to write for music videos and I felt that what’s the point of me writing this? It’s better
to have the music and…
John: Yeah, but if you have a love for the music as opposed to you just jealous and wish you could
play this music which you can’t so you’re really taking under the guise of giving. That’s the problem.
But if you have a genuine love for the music and you want to celebrate the beautiful things that you
saw, I think those critics are critical, pun intended.
Charlie: Yeah, totally. Let’s do a little do a bit of a shift towards back to your work. I guess we’ll start
with influences. You’ve obviously been in the creative world for a quite a while so I guess maybe
what started that and what currently is you’re — “Hey, I like this still” or…
John: Well, I remember my father was an Oakridge tenancy where the atom bomb was created and
he was working there in the summer with a nuclear shield because they were trying to find creative
uses but that wasn’t that far from Memphis where Elvis got started and this was in 1955 and
everyone was talking about rock and roll. “Oh, my god. Did you hear the latest thing they’re doing?
This stuff will never last.” I remember I thought these adults are out of their minds. Don’t they
know this is going to change the world so I was a precautious five-year- old listening to rock and roll
and just lit a fire inside me. I couldn’t believe that adults didn’t realize. How could you not get this?
And then it was later when I was in sixth grade, I heard Ray Charles for the first time. I heard
someone put on “What’d I Say” which has this tribal voice. I thought [inaudible]. I said, “How you
expect met go back to school?” So I don’t know if that was part of the shaman ancestral stuff that
they identified with that and they used Ray Charles as an elder to guide me away from formal
education because after Ray Charles.
Charlie: It was over.
John: It was over.
Charlie. Huh. That’s wild.
John: Yeah, and I had a dream about that actually when I was deep in depression because I couldn’t
sort out where I fit in and people get angry and a lot of us from the upper middle-class backgrounds
we have a period where we’re angry with our parents and we’re rebelling, whatever we were doing,
but it doesn’t disconnect from your parents. I mean love is the strongest bond and then the next
most strong one is anger and rage and hey, you’re still just like your parents okay, but this was kind
of a rite of passage of — Ray Charles was like a mentor and a bit of a father figure not for the upper
middle-class Jewish kid but for the guy who had to go a shaman’s journey but no one there to help
him. Funny time, when Oudou and I met, I already made my peace, it was easy for me to extend
myself to Oudou and understand what he is doing because I wasn’t lost in the chaos inside of myself
like “am I a bad person who’s just hiding behind my interest in black people” or “am I a great guy,
some hero and I’m waiting for people to recognize me.” I knew I understood who I was and that
made it much easier for us to communicate but at that time when I had this dream of about Ray
Charles, it wasn’t like that at all. I really greatly troubled him. In the dream, I can’t believe it. I’m in
Ray Charles’s house and he’s there and he’s got his glasses on, his famous glasses but they’re not the
wrap around so it’s just more like glasses like the ones I have on. I’m just sitting in front of him but
I’m trying to move around to try to look at his eyes and I’m thinking if I’m very quiet and move
slowly, he wouldn’t notice. But Ray [inaudible] and he just says, “Oh, is this what you wanted to
see?” and he takes his glasses off and he looks at me with his eyes. He had blue eyes. I go like, oh, I
had a connection. But what is the connection to a black man? I mean isn’t that a lot like what you
guys are doing. You’re sending a lot of white volunteers over to help in Africa and it’s not just the
work that’s being done, something is going on between the people is there not?
Charlie: Oh yeah, absolutely.
John: That’s why I was so excited to hear about what Oudou is doing because mine happens in my
microcosmic and shamanistic world, you guys are out in the world doing this so I couldn’t wait to
come over and see what guys are doing to get a sense of— some people taking these— I think there
is a psyche and I think that when you believe in God you pay tribute to God and people who don’t
like that call it the universe or isn’t energy that’s a psyche, something that’s written in the time that
people who were enemies in the past, there is a place where we’re looking to say well, that’s a way
to look abut I but let’s look at it in another away and that’s very sexy in a nonsexual way.
Charlie: Yeah, totally. The big comparison I like to make is with journalism and all that kind of stuff
and more countries and places that are at war where it’s like oh, why do you go there and go take
pictures when you could be actually helping. Well, it’s like if I didn’t take pictures you wouldn’t know
about it so that’s the comparison I like to make but yeah, I think that’s awesome, very interesting
stuff. Did you ever get to meet Ray Charles?
John: No, I never met Ray, but I met a lot of people who knew him and when I was trying to start a
record company in Holland, it was all old-timers and some who did arrangements with Billie Holiday.
This was during the disco era where these gems and national resources of musicians couldn’t get
work because people were now listening to disco. They thought Billie Holiday maybe was a goalie
for the New York Rangers. They didn’t know she was a great blues singer who changes the way
everyone confines [inaudible.] So, I just think that there is something about music that goes beyond
— it’s kind of like when you go into a garden and there’s a flower, but we forget that the flower is
the sexual part of the plant. So we’re really doing an intimacy here and that’s another thing. As
much as our culture is obsessed with sex, you took all the sex in the world and you weighed that, I
don’t know how you weight that, but on a conception level, and you extracted the perfume from out
of it and meaning the perfume become intimacy. How much are we getting out of it? How much
transformation happens that people’s lives are changed from the intimacy on the sexual count? I
mean, as men, who doesn’t enjoy having their nerve-endings fired. We’re just like, “I’m hungry, give
me water. Boy this is delicious,” right? But what we’re talking here with your organization is
transforming the world. I think what was significant about Ray Charles and these other people is the
intimacy that they were able to convey. It’s awesome.
Charlie: Yeah, absolutely crazy.
John: It’s a sacred thing.
Charlie: Totally. Yeah, that’s all really. You covered a lot of different crowds.
John: Yeah, we did, man. We had a conversation before we got started, right? And I was interested
in your journey that you dealt with the nasty, boring technical stuff but those were some good news
to pay. It freed you up.
Charlie: Oh yeah. When you were speaking about that yourself that you didn’t want to go to LA for
ten years, that’s literally the same conversation I have with myself. How much time will I put in here,
you know. Slugging around wires and being told what to do at the lowest level, I will not get good
experiences in a different market.
John: It’s interesting. Maybe eight people have listened to this blogand maybe eight-hundred, it’s
not going to be eight million, okay. But you and I, looking into each other’s eyes, do we really care?
Does it matter to you? I mean, to me if it was just Oudou listening that would be good enough for
me.
Charlie: I think, yeah the first one we said that was what we came away with, as long as one person
says “I want to be a part of this.”
John: Yeah, because that’s where the success is. That’s what intimacy is. Jimmy Hendricks said it
well but it was kind of sexual in the way he said it but I think the story is beyond sexuality says, “I
only have a burning desire, let me stand next to your fire.” So, we’re sharing each other’s fire are we
not? You’re not just interviewing me because I wanted to know about your fire before we even got
to start and this would’ve been a totally different interview if I just said okay, here I am, I am ready
to be interviewed. If it were we wouldn’t be having this.
Charlie: Yeah, and the goal from the start was conversation. Let’s just set up a space where we can
grab anyone, sit them down there and be like, “Hey, what’s going on with you? What’s going on?
John: And there’s so much going on, you just got to slow down and understand. If you’re religious,
when you’re having a conversation, you’re in church. If you’re not religious, when you’re talking, the
universe is listening, they’re watching, the whole world is watching and you’re just energy. Two
people can create enough fire to heat the world. How many matches does it take to burn down a
house? There you go. So conversation is sacred. Listening is more powerful than a nuclear weapon.
Charlie: Yeah, that’s hard to argue that? I got one last question.
John: Alrighty
Charlie: So you’ve been doing a lot of work with intergrowth and cross-cultural projects. From your
experiences, what have you found to be the best approach of sparking dialogue and bringing
communities?
John: Well, you got to start with wars. It’s not necessarily out there in our North Korea or the
Northwest, it’s the war within myself, the sadness that I just don’t want to face. If I can deal with
that then I can be more honourable in approaching you with the things that you have that might
startle people who live inside of me. First, you got to look for that war. I just feel that we got to
learn that we don’t really need to steal from each other, we just got to be honest because what you
have in abundance more than not, if I ask with integrity, you will say are you kidding me? If you go
to some place where they have coal, you’re not going to have to fight over a lump of coal. Take all
you want but don’t come here pretending that you’re showing me a better way to mine coal when
really what you want is my coal. So I think just learning to ask with integrity. I remember my wife
with our son. He saw this thing that he wanted for his birthday so bad and he went out and used our
credit card. This was in a small community where they just assume your mom gave you her credit
card and he bought this thing, and then my wife noticed on the bill. “What is this? I didn’t order a
Gameboy,” or whatever and she brought our son in and she said, “What is this?” His head fell, deep
shame that he had stolen from his mom. I said, “Baby, don’t you know I give you more than you can
take from me?” and I think that’s the lesson from that. All of us in our journey to reach maturity,
we’ve all considered stealing. Whether we act on it or not, some of us steal unconsciously, some of
us do it intentionally and get paid heavily for it, right? But I think if we take a deeper look, we can
get more if we actually take the time to know who it is we are going to rip off because I think there is
a deep desire in human beings to give. The fact that you’re taking something from me, you’re taking
my story, but man, it’s such an honour to have someone want to take something from you. You did
it cleanly.
Charlie: Huh, that’s very interesting. There’s a lot to process for this conversation, but I think it was
awesome. Do you have any last things you’d like to say?
John: Yeah, let me think of one of my little poems that I want to share with the folks. The first blues
I ever wrote that I wanted to be respect by the Ray Charles as the one who wrote this and I’m not
going to sing it because I don’t want to embarrassment myself. I don’t have a great band behind me,
but it was a blues about my fears of not fitting in well.
Some people think I’m crazy,
Other say my thoughts aren’t clear.
The truth is people just don’t listen
When they’re paralysed with fear.
So if you’ve listened to my song tonight,
You’ve got nothing to lose
Cause’ if you still need to think I’m crazy,
Well, drink your booze and live as you choose, brother.
I’ve got a question.
Are we all addicted?
Hooked on a habit called life?
Are we all addicted?
Hooked on a habit called life?
Is it a question of kicking once?
Or many more times than twice?
And this is where they would come and play a saxophone. We’d come back and say this
Our bodies are made.
You know our bodies are made from the colours of the earth.
The universe is just a canvas
So paint for what you’re worth
Cause’ you’re made out of colour,
Its true colour you will return.
You’re made out of colour.
Its true colour you will return.
It’s either paint
Or be painted.
Cause’ when you die,
It’s in colours you’ll burn.
Charlie: Thank you so much, John. Hopefully you all enjoyed that. We will have another show next
week so stay tuned and thank you.
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