We Paid for One Movie

Then hopped the fuzzy red velvet rope

Boozhoo, indinawemaaganidog! Aaniin! That is to say hello, all of my relatives! Welcome to another edition of An Irritable Métis. Is a post still relevant nearly a week after its intended context? I guess we’re going to find out, because that is the situation this one is emerging from. I trust it will all still make sense….

Remember, friends, paid subscriptions are very helpful. For all the other stuff I’m doing, this newsletter remains my primary source of income, which continues to amaze me. It’s lasted longer than I ever imagined it would, this newsletter boom, even now as it’s subsided to what feels like a low and relatively constant rumble, and I am eternally grateful to all of you who continue to support not just me but so many other wonderful writers.

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I always and forever want to speak from a lectern covered in a buff’lo hide now.

In the last half hour or so before 9:00am this past Wednesday, August 14, I was sitting at a reserved table in the big ballroom at the Doubletree Hotel in downtown Billings, marveling at what was happening around me. I was less than sixty minutes removed from taking to the lectern to deliver some kind of keynote¹ to open the annual Rocky Mountain Tribal Leaders Conference. There was a murmur of conversation as the room filled, mostly, with Indians. I felt atypically nervous and a little isolated and outsiderish.² I didn’t know the person I’d coordinated this appearance with and though I’d shaken hands with a couple people I wasn’t sure who they were. I was only where I was because I had been met at the entrance by a friend working as an usher of sorts that I know from an entirely different context. Surrounded by people I’ve devoted so much time and energy advocating for I felt like I shouldn’t have been there nor did I feel particularly welcome. Those are minor quibbles, though: I was mostly feeling so grateful that my eyes teared-up just thinking about being there, and the road I’ve been on that delivered me to the moment.

August 14th is an auspicious date for me. Somewhat arbitrarily that is the date that was established as the pub date for my first book, One-Sentence Journal. Books come out on Tuesdays and the 14th just happened to be the closest Tuesday to when it arrived from the printers back in 2018. I’ve told this story many times: the book came out, struck a nerve, and has done impossibly well. I do events around it still; many invitations for speaking engagements and workshops and all the writing adjacent things I do to make a living as a writer grow from the rich abundance that comes from planting that book in this regional literary soil. I owe everything I’m doing now to that little book.

It’s also a memorable date because it was August 14th of 2023 – just a year ago, five years to the day of OSJ’s release – that I received a call from the governor of Montana telling me I was being appointed Montana poet laureate. I’m midway through my term occupying that auspicious position and I’m already stressing a bit over how much I’d still like to accomplish before the Montana Arts Council kicks me to the curb and hands the keys over to someone else and subsequently forgets about me. In particular I feel I’ve largely failed in connecting to the Native community, which is also ridiculous to consider, given I’d be the first to scold someone who suggests that two years is nearly long enough to cultivate the relationships I’d like to in Indian Country. That kind of effort is the epitome of the long game. I’m not working alone in this either; I have a few partners that I work with all the time and I know we are on the right track. I do feel the pressure of time running out, though. Which I’d also argue is a ludicrous, colonial construct … except sometimes it does run out.

Screenshot of the first paragraph of Chapter One of Becoming Little Shell

A couple weeks ago I spent several days in Yellowstone as a “cultural ambassador” that included two bus tours out into the Lamar Valley and back. There were even some journalists along; one wrote a piece HERE you might be interested in, and another HERE. I think all involved did wonderfully. The project as discussed in both articles – reIndigenizing Yellowstone National Park – is a collaborative effort I’m involved in with not just Native folks but also park service folks. It is immensely challenging and also an incredibly long-game effort but I’m thrilled to be part of it.

After the second tour I emerged from the park into cell service and received a text from my mom that my cousin Casey had passed away. He had lived with a number of health problems for decades, none of which I’m specifically aware of but still, he was only a few years older than me. The news hit me hard. It’s been years since we were close but there was a time he was like an older brother to me. Some of the experiences he ushered me into were absolutely formative to who I am today. Movies we went to. He introduced me to D&D. We spent a lot of time together when I was younger and I never forgot it. As I got older, he would sometimes visit me and my friends in Seattle. Sometimes he would come watch our rock shows. He was a friend.

Adulthood created a wide gulf in our relationship. Not from ill will or anything, we just had different lives. His work took him overseas where he lived for a long time. I was doing my thing. A couple years ago he moved back to Missoula, but neither of us made a point to get together. I figured we would eventually. I even thought to connect to him through this book that is about to come out.

I want to say I ran out of time for that re-connection, but I didn’t. I just didn’t take advantage of the time I had and I regret it. I reflected on how, if I could, I would reach out to my old friends and bandmates to share the news of Casey’s passing with them. He had become their friend too. But of the four of us two have already walked on, years after I had last sought them out, and the other, certainly my best friend at the time from the entire group, is also reportedly back living in the area too and neither of us have tracked each other down. Is the relationship I have now – or non relationship – with my remaining old friend and bandmate for the best? If I heard sad news of him would I regret the current state of things? Probably. It’s one of those situations where I wonder if I was one of those “toxic” friends that it is advisable for people to stay away from so I convince myself things are as they should be.

It is something I’m thinking about. I never had a real brother. Both of these guys, Casey and my distant friend I mean, once fit that role for me at times in my life in the same way Jimmy and Steve, the guys I play music with, do today. It’s a lot to think about.

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I don’t write this in an effort for sympathy. I just want people to know about my cousin Casey, and that he was important to me.

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Speaking of Jimmy and Steve, we will be melting faces as American Falcon this coming Thursday, and it’s free, Missoulians!

That kid I was in 1977 who saw Star Wars and etc. with my cousin also bought my first record with my own money that summer. It was KISS: LOVE GUN. I was immediately hooked by rock n’ roll and decided right then – the needle rising and falling and crackling as the vinyl spun, the drums and bass and guitar blasting out of my Radioshack speakers – that I wanted to be a rock star. And I wanted to write books on the side. It took six years before my friends and I started our first band in the summer of 1983, and in the 41 years since I’ve been out of a band for maybe a year, cumulative.

I never became a true rock star but I do write books and no one tells me what to do. Which is kind of the point, isn’t it? And if I hadn’t released that first book that didn’t seem like anyone would really want to read back on August 14, 2018, it’s unlikely I’d be here writing this right now. I wouldn’t be on the cusp of the national emergence of a book that a writer³ for The Los Angeles Times called, “a memoir of deep joy.” I wouldn’t be on the verge of doing a continent-spanning tour. So it’s not a rock tour, but it’s going to be close enough.

These things are worth taking note of. I hope you agree.

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• Speaking of that other book, friends, as of this writing there are still a couple days remaining to get in on a giveaway over at Goodreads; details HERE.

• HERE is a nice little interview my friend Noah Davis conducted on behalf of the Christian Science Monitor.

• I should also mention this: while I am going to a lot of places on book tour where you can get signed and personalized books, Turtle Island is vast and I won’t reach everyone. If you are into that kind of thing – signed and personalized books, that is – I am venturing into Fact & Fiction one more time the morning of my event (that’s Wednesday, August 21) to sign such books that have been ordered since the last time I was in there signing. I’m not saying this is your last chance for that, but it’s your last chance if you want to receive it anytime soon. Once I hit the road it will be more difficult for me to get back to the store to sign more. So don’t let time run out on you! CLICK HERE!

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Chi-miigwech, big thank you, for all of the support, my friends. I am so very grateful!

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1. I hate the word “keynote” in the best of instances because it sounds so grossly corporate, but even with my irritability around the word I can’t call what I delivered a keynote. I really don’t know why I was there and it was incredibly awkward. My name wasn’t anywhere on the poster and I didn’t get an introduction before I took the stage, which was weird and a very awkward way to begin. I adapted and overcame, given all of my other mental and emotional distraction, but it wasn’t my best offering, that’s for sure. I blame it on the notes because I actually prepared some and I usually just wing it.

2. I’m deeply uncomfortable in crowds, but not in front of them. Go figure.

3. The inimitable Lorraine Berry, no less!