Radio Interview
Originally aired on radio and web, this video also features over 100 original haiku poems and illustrated artworks in ceramic, on stone and paper, photography, ink and watercolor, and graphic design.
The interview offers insight into the spirit, work, and process of Snow on Water.
Enjoy!
Portrait by Katherine Henry
Mark: Good Evening everyone. Mark Kenney here with you. It is a Friday evening about 5 minutes after the hour of 8:00 on 100.1FM in Bellows Falls. you are hearing is Harry Hudson. All week long I have been putting up post on the Ear Bisque page. Very happy to have Harry here tonight. He is an artist, musician, poet who now makes his home in Vermont. Very interesting man. Quite an interesting background and we’re gonna talk a little bit about that. We are gonna talk about the music in the background. Harry has put together an album, correct…?
Harry: Correct.
Mark: And we’re here to talk about the album but I want to know a little bit about you too. So let’s give a big, Ear Bisque welcome to Harry Hudson.
Harry: Thank you everybody, it’s nice to be here.
Mark: Its Fun!
Harry: It’s a beautiful studio.
Mark: Yeah. Well go ahead Harry, tell us how this all started…Well, you know what, before you do that, tell us what this is…
Harry: This is a spoken word record of haiku to music that I composed for the album. It occurs each track over the span of a year which is traditional in haiku books and the album at large is like a haiku long poem. That’s about the safest description I can come up with.
Mark: Yeah. It’s very interesting stuff.
Harry: A ten year project, began with an invitation from my sister to share with her a haiku a day through the mail for a year. It started out being daunting and turned out to be one of the greatest gifts I had ever allowed myself.
Mark: Uh-huh. I sat with Harry last night. We had a good time, we had a great time, and he showed me some of his haikus on the computer, just absolutely amazing stuff. And then you put music behind it and the music is just perfect. Just perfect.
Harry: For the longest time I have been looking for a format that would take haiku off of the page and into people’s minds in ways that they’ve been experiencing in our culture. Music is a fine place to start. But as an artist I’ve also been working with visual imagery, headed towards the web with that, possibly even animation.
Mark: Yup. You showed Jana and I a 7-minute presentation, I’m not sure, kind of a slideshow but it seems more interactive than that. You know what I mean? Even though you’re not told to push a button or anything you are forced to read…
Harry: Yes!
Mark: And it’s interesting. Tell us about that. Tell us about how that is all set up.
Harry: Part of my practice in haiku is to work from experience and in creating the visuals for that I was working with objects that were found objects and bring them home and place them on a scanner. I would scan the objects directly and compose images from that. So that DVD “Snow on Water” is built around that idea in sort of a walking meditation.
Mark: Yeah, it was funny because both Jana and I, we sat down and you set everything up and said, “this is gonna be like 7 minutes…” and you turned off the lights and started it. And after 7 minutes I felt different…
Mark and Harry: Laughs
Mark: I don’t know…it’s hard to explain… It’s just kinda like relaxing…
Harry: You know, I have an issue with that myself. When I revisit the work many times I begin to get sleepy and ultimately I drift into a trance. And it has been this way since the beginning. I believe it works on the level of dreams when it is done right.
Mark: Uh-hum. I thought maybe the CD was all part of a package. You were going to put together a collection.
Harry: That’s correct. The idea is that the CD and DVD and handmade books are all part of a body of work that is representing the 10 years of work.
Mark: 10 years of haiku, of writing haiku… Harry: I like it. Mark: Every day. I mean that’s a huge project. I mean this is something you’ve been working on for 10 plus years.
Harry: I counted one day when I was still in Tennessee– This project started in the mountains of Tennessee and continues in Vermont. And I counted, today I’m at about 7,500 miles walked in this meditation. That’s like walking from here to California and back.
Mark: Really? That’s cool stuff…
Harry: laughs
Mark: Alright, the name of the album…
Harry: Brush and Drum
Mark: Brush and Drum. Influenced by, I mean I could hear it immediately, was Native American.
Harry: That was my hope. Originally haiku was done with brush on scrolls and illustrations included known as haiga and I have been doing that as well. But I started with Michelle’s project doing it in the computer primarily. Then in the 10 years I found my way back into working by hand. The reference in Brush and Drum is the path from the Japanese East-meets-West in the Native American voice.
Mark: Cool…There’s just so much, I’m remembering it and I thinking “I want to talk about this…”. So for a year there was the postcards. Tell us about that.
Harry: As an artist it was the most natural thing for me to also think visually. Haiku is a very visual poetry and often the haiku would come from something that you see and you want to relate that in some way. So on a daily basis, whatever was available if it suited the mood it was included in the piece. It could be everything from a rubbing to a found object to scans, it could be a clipping from a map. There was quite a lot of variety in that regard and then there were a lot of inside references between Michelle and I because it was directly a sort of diary of our year together and how our work, how our year was influencing each other.
Mark: Yeah, its just amazing stuff here. You look at this stuff and its just little pieces of art, you know what I mean, with stamps on them…
Harry: So they went through the mail, so as a designer I would anticipate where the cancellation mark would go and sometimes they would become a very active part of the composition. Other times they would come back damaged, something would happen to them in the process and that’s all part of the loveliness of being present in a haiku mind.
Mark: Alright, let’s listen to some more…
Mark: What we’re listening to is a spoken word album new from Harry Hudson called Brush and Drum and what it is is a mix of his music, guitar music mostly, and his haiku. Interesting, interesting stuff. Oh, I thought that was you talking in the background…
Harry: I do that you know…
Mark: Laughs. So talk a little bit about how some of your haiku is different than regular haiku.
Harry: It’s a phenomenon of English language haiku that it came to English language in the form of 5-7-5 syllables. It’s a fabulous form to teach in Grammar school because it teaches us to be creative while counting syllables. But modern haiku as of today has abandoned that form in the interest of better content. And I was never interested in the form, its like going to the museum and seeing the frame and not the painting. So for me when I began I was reading translations in English done without attention to the syllable-counting form we were all introduced to in grammar school. I have never thought twice about it in the writing of it, but in every reading or presentation there is that question of form that returns from the audience. After 60 years in English the form has and continues today to evolve as a living poetry. Some practitioners today only write in one line, while others form pictographs combining the words and message. And that’s just the text. Then there is the presentation of it, with poem and images. Photography, computer graphics and video have found their way into what was once brush and ink scrolls.
Mark: Alright, the album is out for sale, correct?
Harry: Yeah, its on the internet.
Mark: Alright, give us the address…
Harry: The web address is www.arcadiadesigns.net and there is a menu there for CD and DVD. Currently its available as a signed limited edition.
Mark: Cool! I saw the packaging. You know what, it looks great, the whole thing just looks great. I was wicked impressed. Laughs…
Harry: I was a designer once upon a time, I suffered through that for 20 years.
Mark: Well, you did a great job, You did a great job.
Harry: Thank you.
Mark: Alright, we’re probably gonna have Harry back. I want you people to visit the website- check it out. Very talented people. You have to check it out. One more time with that address…
Harry: www.arcadiadesigns.net
Mark: Alright, lets go out, we’re gonna listen to the rest of this track You are listening to WOOL LP 100.1FM in Bellows Falls Thank you once again, Harry..
Harry: Thank you, it was a pleasure…