PureX
Veteran Member
Two of my favorite artists in the world are an Australian Aboriginal couple named Archie Roach and Ruby Hunter. I stumbled on them years ago as I was fascinated with all things Australian after a visit to that wonderful country, and I was looking up Australian artists on the internet.
Two things really caught my mind and imagination as I read about them: one was that they had both been part of the "lost generation" of Australian Aboriginals who had been taken from their homes as very young children and raised in horrible boarding schools, only to be turned out on the streets, lost and alone, years later. And the other was that Archie had overcome an alcohol addiction, and he and Ruby had overcome homelessness through their love of each other and the practice of music.
As an artist and music lover myself, and a recovered alcoholic, I felt a kind of kinship with these folks even though their suffering had been so different from mine, and their world so far away (I live in the U.S.). I've never met them, but I've collected all their published music, and hope someday to get the chance to see them perform live.
But anyway, I was just now reading something that Archie Roach said in an interview, about his suffering, and the nature of suffering in general, and it caused me to think on the many threads I have seen in which we on RF seem to be grappling with the idea of suffering.
Here was Archie's quote: “We can’t measure the depths of each other’s suffering. When you suffer, that’s the worst suffering in the world. That’s what I try to talk about (in his music).
“When I first wrote Took the Children Away, I thought, ‘Here I’m writing for my people – at last a song that tells this terrible thing.’ But non-aboriginal people are coming up to me and saying it meant so much to them, because they didn’t have to be aboriginal to understand the emotion of being separated from your mother?
“A lot of things are sad but I would never ask to be different. Terrible things happen because of misunderstanding, but I know I would be a poorer person if I had not been through these things.”
Archie has written and published a number of songs about loss, and suffering, and forgiveness. It's one of the reasons I appreciate his music. In many ways it defines him as a man and as an artist. As horrible as his childhood was, and his time as a homeless alcoholic, it was his finding his way through this suffering, and eventually overcoming it in his mind and heart, that defines him not only as a man and an artist, to me, but also to some degree as a hero.
Who would he be, after all, without it? Who would I be, had I not fallen into the abyss of alcoholism and hopelessness, and then been risen up, again? Who would any of us be without our pain and suffering, and our losses in life?
-Just wondering what you all think about this.
Archie and Ruby performing with the Australian Arts Orchestra
Two things really caught my mind and imagination as I read about them: one was that they had both been part of the "lost generation" of Australian Aboriginals who had been taken from their homes as very young children and raised in horrible boarding schools, only to be turned out on the streets, lost and alone, years later. And the other was that Archie had overcome an alcohol addiction, and he and Ruby had overcome homelessness through their love of each other and the practice of music.
As an artist and music lover myself, and a recovered alcoholic, I felt a kind of kinship with these folks even though their suffering had been so different from mine, and their world so far away (I live in the U.S.). I've never met them, but I've collected all their published music, and hope someday to get the chance to see them perform live.
But anyway, I was just now reading something that Archie Roach said in an interview, about his suffering, and the nature of suffering in general, and it caused me to think on the many threads I have seen in which we on RF seem to be grappling with the idea of suffering.
Here was Archie's quote: “We can’t measure the depths of each other’s suffering. When you suffer, that’s the worst suffering in the world. That’s what I try to talk about (in his music).
“When I first wrote Took the Children Away, I thought, ‘Here I’m writing for my people – at last a song that tells this terrible thing.’ But non-aboriginal people are coming up to me and saying it meant so much to them, because they didn’t have to be aboriginal to understand the emotion of being separated from your mother?
“A lot of things are sad but I would never ask to be different. Terrible things happen because of misunderstanding, but I know I would be a poorer person if I had not been through these things.”
Archie has written and published a number of songs about loss, and suffering, and forgiveness. It's one of the reasons I appreciate his music. In many ways it defines him as a man and as an artist. As horrible as his childhood was, and his time as a homeless alcoholic, it was his finding his way through this suffering, and eventually overcoming it in his mind and heart, that defines him not only as a man and an artist, to me, but also to some degree as a hero.
Who would he be, after all, without it? Who would I be, had I not fallen into the abyss of alcoholism and hopelessness, and then been risen up, again? Who would any of us be without our pain and suffering, and our losses in life?
-Just wondering what you all think about this.
Archie and Ruby performing with the Australian Arts Orchestra
