WEBVTT

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Well, any of you fellas
want to say anything?

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Well, seated here with me, Andy
Rush, who illustrated the book,

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responsible not for
that photograph.

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but for the watercolors that
you have seen flashing by.

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Andy and Drum are
old collaborators.

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Seated next to Andy is
Susan Lowell Humphreys.

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Many of you know her
own wonderful writings.

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Her great novella, Ganado Red.

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And the Humphreys part,
along with her husband,

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Ross Humphreys, that's
Rio Nuevo Publishing, who

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brought up this beautiful book.

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Andy, Susan.

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Good evening, everybody.

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There's one name I want to
mention besides Susan and Ross,

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who done just an
amazing job bringing

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this book into
reality, and that is I

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worked with a typography
designer, [? Emil Baird, ?]

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in the early days when we shaped
this book and shaped its look.

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And so I just want to
acknowledge his work.

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I don't know if
he's here tonight,

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but he's very much
a part of our team.

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Just a few things
about the illustrations

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I wanted to mention,
Drum once commented

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that the guests
who first came down

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to the remote
canyons of his ranch

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usually took on average five
days to slow down enough

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to what he called get there.

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And as an aside, that I think
he meant as a compliment to me,

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he pointed out that it
seemed to take me only three,

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partially due to
the fact that I came

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from the art ranch of Rancho
Linda Vista in Oracle.

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So I was a little quicker,
but not all that much.

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And the illustrations in
Voice of the Borderlands

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are taken from the many
drawings and paintings

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that I have made on my
many visits to Drum's home.

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And some of those are
here on easels today.

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I've spent a lot of my life
walking and sitting and drawing

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and painting in the creek beds
and the hillsides of his world,

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trying to steal myself
sufficiently to get there.

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And I can testify
that what Drum meant

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was exactly my experience.

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For me, life in the
city, as we all know,

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has its own power and
its own imagination

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on us and its own magnetism.

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And that's both exciting.

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But spiritually, I find it
very dangerous in some ways.

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When I leave the city to
enter the thinly populated

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borderlands of Drum's world,
the cacophony of the city

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is like an old familiar friend
and I leave it reluctantly.

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Then the paved roads gradually
are left behind as we know.

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And the country roads become
narrower and narrower.

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And the electrical
grid thins out.

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And in many places, it
disappears altogether.

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And it crushes my ears inward
with that kind of silence.

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After a few days,
near Guadalupe,

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walking in the deep recesses
of the Canyon country,

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there comes another kind,
an older kind of hearing

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that in time becomes almost
mythic to me in its power.

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Things Drum writes
about the sound of wind,

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the ripple of leaves,
the gurgle of a creek,

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the screech of a hawk
should one be on horseback.

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What is left to see and hear
is the mantra like phrase

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that Drum repeats in this book,
throughout the book, to place

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us in that stillness,
where he says turquoise

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stones in the creek
bed, the sound of horses

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who's in the sand.

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So with that phrase, you
are now in Drum's world,

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where the elemental,
molecular whirl of eternity

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is almost too close for comfort.

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As friends over many
years, Drum and I

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have shared our respective
fascination, I think,

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with the interaction
of human life

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and the almost
forgotten natural world.

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I think that we both begin
from the same premise

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that the purposes
that we call art

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are founded upon bearing
witness to all of life,

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not just our own.

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And then in addition, one needs
to choose a craft and a skill

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to be developed and sustained
through regular practice.

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Beyond that, there
really isn't that much

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to do, but to observe
and honor what

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man and nature so abundantly
open up to our consciousness,

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or as Drum says the
opportunity to tell it true.

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My particular love of
drawing and painting the land

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directly from my
own observation,

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I like to think of
as a kind of match

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to Drum's Voice
Of The Borderlands

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to his telling it true.

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That doesn't mean I
don't think avoiding

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the hard work of distilling
what I see into the metaphor

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that we sometimes call art.

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And while only I may know how
many times I've fallen short,

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I like to think that the
journey I added to Drum's very

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wonderful book reflects
our kindred spirit

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and our willingness to be
taught by the land, that

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is the mother of his
stories, and I think

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it's the mother of us all.

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So I had a great fun
doing this book with him.

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And you're seeing it's a
result flashing by up here.

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Thank you.

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[APPLAUSE]