1961 Bernard
The house where I spent the first seventeen years of my life was located on Bernard Road in Windsor. On summer nights I could hear the distant toots of freighters navigating the Detroit River. I could also hear a primordial thud broadcast from the Ford Motor Company Foundry. The neighbourhood teemed and teamed with kids. You only had to ride your bike down the road to ball diamonds at AKO park and you’d find a game already happening. My first bands were composed of budding musicians who lived within blocks of one another.
This morning, as I revisit that era, I picture a modest home that was eventually clad in white aluminium siding. My focus now zooms in on the address - black numbers against a tan-coloured piece of wood. It reads 1961. Initially, that number doesn’t seem significant until you put your head on the small patch of lawn and attempt a handstand. If you can pull it off, the secret is revealed - 1961 remains 1961 even when you are flipped upside down.
My father taught me that there are certain phrases in English that can be said backwards and forwards. They are called palindromes. His favourite was the one he claimed the first man uttered to the first woman: MADAM I’M ADAM.
The motif of my childhood home possessing this magical code seems to have forecasted the path I would eventually follow - the crooked route of the Trickster archetype. Most of my adult life tells the tale of someone headed upstream to the mainstream. Anyone who has gone down that road knows that it comes with derogatory connotations: he’s such a backwards person. However, among the Lakota First Nations people, one the most beloved characters, who show up in teaching stories, is named Heyókȟa. He does everything opposite, including riding horses backwards, or wearing clothes inside out.
My version of going against expectations includes living in intentional communities, both rural and urban; choosing to only play improvisational music for many years; eating a vegetarian diet during a time when organic food was difficult to find; bringing the practice of mindfulness into corporation and school boards; supporting my family through the ambiguous vocation of Soundwork as Soulwork; introducing poetry, artwork, and music making to teams who worked in the gas and oil industry; educating two of our children through alternatives to a public school system (the Waldorf pedagogy and homeschooling).
Yes, riding backwards comes with a price psychologically and financially but… what a ride! And you, dear reader. When and how did you traverse the upside down or backward path. What did it ask of you and what did you gain in return?
Ride on!