Kevin Derrow, The Dutchman (Mad Sailor of the North Atlantic) Music, Life, and Community

Titles and subtitles, so much to be said here in so little space... (but several photos at the very end)

 

The ‘Big Idea’ is that people these days – that is, many of you and certainly I – have too often forsaken authentic Community and Folk in favor of commercial culture: radio and internet music, television and movie stories, ‘successful’ authors, etc; and that tradeoff impoverishes us all.

 

Kevin Derrow (GHS '74) brought this home to me in a big way when we met recently (for the first time) in Ashley to discuss an upcoming Garrett Sixties Music Festival (Sat Aug 16, Kevin will be managing a music stage and open mic).

 

Driving home I listened to some of Kevin’s songs (he just happened to have some of his CDs and poetry with him), and was astonished by:

·         How good the songs were – lyrics and music – very good.

·         And how much more meaningful lyrics and music are when you and the artist are linked by community.

 

While we had not previously met:

·        Kevin’s mother Becky Derrow was my kindergarten teacher.

·        My own wife Kathy Koons Rowe taught Kevin as a junior in ’72-’73.

·        More fundamentally, we have shared the same community.

 

 

And as I had read several of Kevin’s essays on Facebook in the past two years, I also sat down and read the Mad Sailor of the North Atlantic poems he gave me. Not nearly as mature or polished as his excellent songs, still these poems contain many, many lightening flashes of insight and expression; Kevin is indeed a poet.

 

 

Now, back to the Big Idea: Reading Kevin’s Mad Sailor poems, and especially listening to his original songs and music, colored now by the context of personal contact and shared community, was a very powerful experience, which I can intimate only per the notion of alchemy – an almost mystical transformation of base material into gold.

 

And then I knew ...

                                   What we have lost...

                                                                         Abdicated...

 

To commercial literature, entertainment, song, dance, and art.

 

 

There are so many others in the community with so much to share...

 

But when the ‘community’ does not commune, our experience is base...

 

Though we are unaware,

 

as if born blind, deaf, and dumb. 

 

 

 

 

 

 



The Mad Sailor, February 2014

 

 

Stephen Rowe welcomes correspondence of all sort at StephenRowe.OriGraphics@yahoo.com (watch for the period between Rowe and OriGraphics), and can be found on Facebook by first logging in, and then typing ArtMissionary  (all one word) into its “Search for people” form, or by clicking on https://www.facebook.com/#!/ArtMissionary.