Crowspun... Crow Johnson Evans

Travel

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Who Sparks Your Inspiration or Compassion?

Who are the people who spark your mind and stimulate your creativity?  I discover human gems around every corner. A treasure to me might be to you just a “what? I don’t get it?”  How can that be?

You can make a list of a half-dozen or dozen experiences in your life that changed your world forever. The list I can assemble may not share any of the experiences you list. I don’t know the joy of childbirth or grandmother-hood, of seeing my husband nurture a son or daughter, or having siblings to compare stories of our lives. You may never have cared for parents in their declining years, visited India three times, or tried to draw the emotion you’ve seen in someone’s face… or struggled to craft a song that carries the deepest emotions you have experienced.

We can’t compare the highs and lows in our lives, but I do believe that the intensity of your experience is no less earth-shattering or inspirational than those I have lived.

So who are the people who have lifted you?
I look forward to sharing some of mine with you. And vice-versa.

Do you remember the photo of the Afgan girl with fear and anticipation in her beautiful green eyes, on the cover of National Geographic Magazine, year?

That photo was burned in my memory before I had any idea who took the photo.

In the last few years I have followed the work and the blogs of Steve McCurry.  www.SteveMcCurry.com

 

When I was in India for the first time, I arrived in Mumbai in a taxi on a rainy night. A woman stood too close to traffic in the rain with her child in her arms and tapped on the cab window. She was asking for anything that I had, that I could give to her. My heart reached to her then and still reaches.

My watercolor study of Steve McCurry’s fabulous photo.

When I saw this photo by Steve McCurry, I became wrapped in that moment.

Steve McCurry’s amazing photo.

As a passionate later-in-life learning artist, I wrote to him and asked for permission to do a painting based on his photo. I will forever be grateful for his kind permission to let me imagine touching with paint… the moment of his photo.

 

 

 

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First Blog

Thank you for stopping by. I’ve spent hours trying to find something truly worth saying in this, my first ever blog. No earth-shaking truths have fallen into my lap, but I’ve had some great walks down our dirt road and spoken to the birds and the neighbor’s cows. Every second that passes we humans express our ups and downs on facebook, twitter, and blogs. What a mighty megaphone. Decades ago, getting a quarterly newspaper in the mail (the Zassafras Music News) was a group undertaking. ZMN cheered fellow singer/songwriters and held a splash of philosophical doodah and many hugs.

So picking up right where I left off…my life is going amazingly well. Arthur and I have both of our moms (88 and 90) living with us in our NW Arkansas home. I’ve been off the road for about a decade, just enough time to miss my music family and develop a passion for fiber arts-spinning yarns, weaving, knitting, and dying wool. The energies I used to put into writing songs has oozed out of me as short stories and essays. “Flights of Fancy” will be published before the new year (Mockingbird Lane Press).

The fabulous author/teacher/knitter Beth Brown-Reinsel will fly in tomorrow from VT for a two week residency at the Writers’ Colony in Dairy Hollow in Eureka Springs. I’m still on the board of WCDH and stand in awe of the colony’s reach and significance. Founder Crescent Dragonwagon is teaching “Fearless Writing” there next week. Full circle and sweet this life.

And come to think of it, I could tell you about our travels…and…and

Very best to you and yours, Crow