Memorial Barney Bush, November 20, 2021
From Jean Rochard
Dear Barney,
We met in Paris (France, not Texas) in 1990. On the stage of the Maison de la Culture de Bobigny, your words from the poem “Left for Dead” dedicated to Leonard Peltier took that evening an extraordinary resonance that embraced so many people and for so long. Set to music by Tony Hymas, these words marked the beginning of a formidable adventure.
With Tony you were going to be, so naturally, part of an exceptional music-word duet with multiform inspirations crossed by lightning.
A great evocative force. Together, with other companions, we travelled through the cities of France, Basque Country, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and even, last time, on Turtle Island in Minneapolis. Concerts, records, talks, work with illustrators, workshop with kids, interviews (one was one hour conversation between you and a French philosopher on the main tv channel)…
Your words as well as the music, the playing, became an active challenge in so many different situations. So much to reflect on the past in the emergence of the present to imagine another future than the one imposed on us.
Something about truth.
Together we discovered, exchanged, shared, learned and laughed a lot, we lived, strongly lived.
The word "resistance" is not an empty word and you still used it so firmly during our last telephone conversation last early September.
You have left us, we miss you, but in the face of this complicated and often terrifying world, your words are here, like so many dynamic strokes, revealed flashes, lucid proofs of love.
Megwich
***
From Tony Hymas
"Misho send me your song on the night winds that I might catch its motion ...
ride its blessed melody into the glaze of winter stars ...
the softest doeskins smoked for our feet ...
the journey over the Milky Way where grandmothers sound the conches ...
the calls to come home"
Such beautiful words to set to music - thanks Barney - thanks ...
and for some fun memories too
Photo : Jean Rochard
