Travel/Adventure
“Live an Adventurous Life!” — Shonda Buchanan
A true nomad (or travel junkie), I’ve been on the road since I was 18, having left my small town of Kalamazoo, Michigan for the big city of Angels, LA. I’ve moved maybe 30 times in my life, driven across Indian Country at least 15 times, and traveled to 10 countries, and I still haven’t been everywhere I want to go. Life is too short and as a traveler, I meet people in every culture where they are in their world, particularly since I’m in it.
Travel Articles
Nina Simone: So Close Yet . . .
JUNE 22, 2000 12 AM / SPECIAL TO THE LA TIMES
Lufthansa Airlines gate, Los Angeles, March 30, 1999
“The weight of artistry is unlike any other. It is not like a shackle you can remove once you buy your freedom. It is not a fragile sheath of skin you can crawl out of at the end of your life. It is so unlike any other choice of profession or career because it, the art, lives and breathes inside you. It often holds your eyes steady when you want to let them wander on the other side of sane. It becomes the breath, many times saving your life with a well-placed kiss, a piece of bread, a corner of water, a straw.
That is what I recognized the moment I came to know the music of Nina Simone in the summer of 1993. Her lyrics spilled in my mouth like a young woman about to lose her virginity to the right man. My work as a performance artist and a poet–granted, like comparing a sliver to a redwood–resembled Nina’s. My etchings as a writer and a poet filled up within me like a well of crisp Michigan water, seeping with a heady speed into me, even as time emptied it. On more than one occasion, Nina Simone’s words and music saved my life.”