Angela Carole Brown is an award-winning author, poet, multi-media artist, and singer/ songwriter, and is involved in the wellness arts. This is her space for telling stories, exploring the creative process, and courting the marvelous caves of self-discovery.
May this New Year bring you peace, surrender, serenity, and a few breathtaking insights. May you want for nothing, because you already have everything. May the intentions you set this day be felt against the sides of mountains, ring into the ether with an ear-warming reverberation, and settle in the bones of those not as fortunate as you. And may those intentions keep us all connected like a mighty woven net of love that always catches us when we fall. Happy New Year, one and all!
As a working musician, the very last thing I do in the very last moments of every year is sing.
“… as it has been since forever ago and auld lang syne. I am a New Year baby; it is in my DNA to usher out an old, usher in a new. To ritualize the idea of rebirth, renewal, and restoration; to chant, to pray, to dance, to give auspiciousness to new beginnings and rites of passage, to participate in burning bowl rituals and labyrinth walks, to summon the rains and the gods, to howl at the moon, to burn sage, to close my eyes, shut off the valve and listen. Listen to the wind in the trees tell me what I need to know next, what I need to do next, how I need to sing next. And then I sing.” ——— (Excerpt from my poem “Lost & Found” from the collection BONES)
May I call you this? We’ll soon both be
members of a cherished club,
and as such I feel, already, a kinship.
As I write this, the mouths of the
purple morning-glories beyond my window
are achingly gaped,
singing your praises I like to think,
knowing you are coming,
and the sun is brilliant, almost white,
on this late-winter morning
after a week of sunless rain.
You are coming. This I know.
And I feel hope, which scares me some.
I am grateful and sad. I think we both know why,
and there is enough disappointment in myself
without continuing to reinvigorate it
with words. I ask only this:
Walk deliberately toward it.
Trip and fall, if it comes to it, but take no prisoners, least of all him.
Expose panties. Jump back up. Make a joke out of the spill,
scrappy like I know you must be.
Then keep on stepping high.
Keep him in gentle accord.
Keep yourself there too.
Above all, breathe. The dark nights for both of you
will soften their edges, and the morning-glory
will yawn again each dawn to remind you that you are as glorious.
Send me a postcard from beyond the moon.
I hung out there myself once.
We’ll regale together this love supreme that
keeps us all rallying for one another.
There is so much to say. And I have been largely silent on the subject, in this social media playground. Because others are more articulate. The world is full of articulate polemics on the subject. An entire movement – Black Lives Matter – has been necessitated. This strange epidemic. It is. An epidemic. And for much of the world, it is somewhat of an abstract. But think of someone’s son. Someone’s father. Someone’s brother. Think of them as children growing up. Think of where (and why) we have turned a very wrong corner, after ALL of the vital work of the civil rights movement, of history! and the enlightenment of men that has continually tried to be fostered and fought for.
I added the following stanza to a song I wrote 15 years ago, because there is a new dynamic now:
In matters global to familial, my solemn heart doth daily pray;
Let not endangered be the old black man someday.
Endangered. Think of that word. That threat. That awesome haunt of prophecy.
In the wake of this epidemic that seems to be our nation’s startling reality, my 15-year-old song rings now with a sobering irony. It was originally written about my brother Mike, spun from, and into, a pastoral, nostalgic, childhood idyllic.
Today it chills.
I feel so strange about this offering, because as artists we always want to reflect the times, but what this reflects hurts me to my core. I have three brothers in total, all young men still. I just want them to live to be old men someday. That they happen to be black . . .
Angela Carole Brown is a published author, a recipient of the Heritage Magazine Award in poetry, and has produced several albums as a singer/songwriter, and a yoga/mindfulness CD. Bindi Girl Chronicles is her writing blog. Follow her on INSTAGRAM & YOUTUBE.
Those who read books travel the world and time itself.
Are explorers, adventurers, discoverers.
Take on beggars and kings with no thought in the ranking.
Have their minds forced open and their spirits ever expanding
in insatiable hunger for more.
Those who read books fill themselves with wonder.
Know that a book is a friend,
a teacher, a priest,
an agitator.
Are not afraid to be made uncomfortable.
Grow the wings that continue, muscle by muscle,
to sprout upon reaching “The End” time and time anew.
Fly. Fall. Fly again.
Those who read books are changed.
And glad of it.
Angela Carole Brown is a published author, a recipient of the Heritage Magazine Award in poetry, and has produced several albums as a singer/songwriter, and a yoga/mindfulness CD. Bindi Girl Chronicles is her writing blog. Follow her on INSTAGRAM & YOUTUBE.
Angela Carole Brown is the author of three published books, The Assassination of Gabriel Champion, The Kidney Journals: Memoirs of a Desperate Lifesaver, and Trading Fours, is a recipient of the Heritage/Soulword Magazine Award in poetry, and has produced several albums of music and a yoga/mindfulness CD. Bindi Girl Chronicles is her writing blog.
Angela Carole Brown is the author of three published books, The Assassination of Gabriel Champion, The Kidney Journals: Memoirs of a Desperate Lifesaver, and Trading Fours, and has produced several albums of music and a yoga/mindfulness CD. Bindi Girl Chronicles is her writing blog. Follow her on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram & YouTube.
Angela Carole Brown is the author of three published books, The Assassination of Gabriel Champion, The Kidney Journals: Memoirs of a Desperate Lifesaver, and Trading Fours, is a recipient of the Heritage/Soulword Magazine Award in poetry, and has produced several albums of music and a yoga/mindfulness CD. Bindi Girl Chronicles is her writing blog. Follow her on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram & YouTube.