4.1 Shy-Anne Hovorka Connects

This is the script referenced when recording the intro and extro and bridge to this episode - actual recording differs slightly:

 Theme

Welcome to my little blanket fort home recording space, and a special edition of Something Different This Way Comes. My conversation with Shy-Anne Hovorka, and the song we wrote and composed together

All in one generously long visit at her home near Nipigon last July

I love the song:

When was the last time your feet touched the ground

This is a very grounded conversation.

Our barefeet hooked on the rungs of the high stools beside her kitchen island

By the time we wrote that song they were a little bit dirtier, because we’d both run out barefoot across the lawn and down the beaten trail towards the river.

Grounded in our connections to here, to now.

To our home and the life we are a part of, the water, earth, air

The food we eat, tools we use, clothing we choose.

We touched on many things, but we kept circling back to connection.

Though I started by asking about hope:

Tape one:

I have to stop there.

The conversation didn’t stop there, but that moment, that moment rung my heart like a gong.

The despair.

Really not knowing if we can possibly save the environment

That is the very definition of despair

And she’s not throwing it out there as an excuse to stop trying to save this world, to do less or not bother.

Shy Anne Hovorka goes above and beyond.

But she shares there this sharp, heavy, horrible despair.

And I so want to take that away for her.

I want to give her hope, a solid rope of hope to pull her free from that dark fear that all the mistakes we have made and keep on making, all the ways we have gotten accustomed to doing things that are ruining this planet and are compounding one upon the other until our very ability to continue to live as a species on this planet is in peril, that we will hold so tightly onto those customs and habits, be so slow and insufficient in letting them go, that we will kill our home.

I want to throw Shy-Anne a rope of hope and pull her free of that dark fear.

I hear despair, ringing, ringing, singing your heart down to the deep dark pull of dread

I feel despair, singing, singing, ringing your heart down to the deep dark pull of dread

And I wanna throw the you a rope I wanna throw you a rope of hope

Bright, strong pull you right up bright clear

Into my hope, my heart, calling you home, my friend

Wrap your hands around my rope of hope, I’ll pull you back

Into to the light

But now you’re deep in the night dread night

I hear despair ring, ringing, singing your heart down to the deep pull of dark dread.

Even now, months later, my ringing heart aches to free her from this moment of despair she shared.

Not a moment, a conversation threaded through with despair

Not crippling, now. Shy-Anne is a force of light and courage not to be underestimated.

But still, she is not confident that this climate crisis, rooted in colonialism and entrenched but unsustainable ways of things and doing thing, she’s not sure we can save ourselves.

And I didn’t talk about that with her.

I just left it ringing there in the space within our conversation.

And we kept on chatting, about recycling and waste.

Until a couple of minutes later the dog started barking and Shy-Anne stopped talking to run outside barefoot and make sure everyone was okay.

I ran after her, also barefoot

Across the soft bright sunny lawn into the cool shade under the trees

Then down an even softer, well worn path down through the bush where the raging river sang loud but just out of side beside us.

Until Shy Anne had found her husband and their son and the dogs.

Everyone was okay.

And we walked back up to the house, sat back around the table, and talked some more.

Tape three

Instrumental

Shy Anne Hovorka is a songwriter, recording artist and singer. She lives near Nipigon Ontario, about an hour and a half down the TransCanada highway from my home in Thunder Bay.

And she is a teacher, she just kept on gifting me with knowledge throughout our conversation instinctively, like sharing facts is just how a conversation rolls.

I so love that about her. That is just how I like a conversation to roll.

But Shy-Anne is also an amazing songwriter.

Her songs are being featured in a concert with the Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra this season, an intimate concert at the Italian Hall in January

I will include a link to the concert site where you can buy tickets in my show notes.

And also a link to her website where you can find some of her videos

As well as her blog about gardening!

But don’t race off there quite yet - or if you do, come back soon. To hear the song we wrote before I left. It was almost suppertime by then so we didn’t dilly dally.

She pulled out her guitar, because I had failed to bring mine, and came up with an arpeggiated chord progression and we started working out lyrics,

Inspired by our conversation about the knowledge and perspective inherent in the Anishnabe language, about walking outside barefoot, and about the value of connections

To the land, the air  and water, to other living species, human and not human, and our connection to this moment.

Now.

Song

Composed then Recorded on a single microphone in Shy-Anne Hovorka kitchen last summer

That was Touch the Ground

Lyrics and chords are available at www.Something Different This Way Comes

Along with links to that Green Chemist I mentioned - his name is Paul Anastas by the way

And to Elder Dave Ker-CHAY-ne ‘s Turtle Lodge in Winnipeg - Shy-Anne referenced him a few times so I had to look him up and am glad of it.

Themesong:

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Give us a great review! Recommend it to a friend! That would be so fantastic.

I’m Heather McLeod

Themesong out.