You Know Mike Videographer, photographer, poet and screenwriter, propagandist for ordinary people and for the world around us. Plus a collector of things only he would see, combine and preserve.
You know Mike Hazard, even if you don’t see him every day in the newspaper. If there’s something going on that matters to people, there’s an excellent chance Mike will be on the outskirts, taking pictures, snapping away, avoiding being the story. Kind of like a monk -- only, instead of illuminating manuscripts, he turns fleeting moments into history.
Everywhere Mike looks, he sees consciousness. Everything he sees says Howdy! Or … Help!
Mike has accumulated what must be almost a million things -- birds, things that look like birds, flowers, things that seem like flowers. And on and on. There is a mountain of these things.
Mike produced a series of videos on Minnesota artists: Robert Bly, Gene McCarthy, Tom McGrath, Phebe Hanson, Louis Jenkins, Margaret Hasse, James Moore, Jim Northrup, Michael Dennis Browne, and Mike’s wife Tressa Sularz.
You may have caught his PBS video about West 7th Street neighborhood fixture Carl Bentson.
All these things, taken together, suggest a life lived very consciously, not so much about himself as about you, me, and the air we breathe.
Mike Hazard comes this close (this close, fingers almost touching) to being a Bodhisattva for Minnesota. (A Bodhisattva is someone able to attain nirvana right now if he wants to. But he or she puts it off to help others through life’s messiness. Wisdom willing to suffer.)
This is my report of a talk the two of us had over breakfast, one Mike to another, at a sidewalk table outside the Highland Grill May 19, 2018.
Breakfast With Mike I had called Mike earlier in the week because I had a desire to meet with people I admired but did not know very well. Mike and I had nodded at each other at events for years -- but never got down and dirty. We looked at each other across the table like we hailed from different universes. Our first few attempts fell flat. Then, Mike burst into a vivid and gesticulated rendition of Rolf Jacobsen’s poem (translated by Robert Bly) “Old Age.” It ends with:
The old who so gradually become themselves once more and so gradually break up like smoke, no one notices it, they are gone into sleep and light. I thought to myself, “I couldn’t do that with a gun to my head.” Aloud, I said, “Jesus.” So our topic would be misgivings about getting older.
Mike said: “I’ve been working and creating for four decades. But I only know of three times I have been mentioned in the local papers.” He ticked them off. It did seem like paltry acknowledgment of all he has done for individuals and groups. They knew who he was, even if the newspapers didn’t. But still …
“What would you like to have happen?� I asked him. He knew exactly. He would want a collected poems published. He would want his photographs to be shown in galleries and museums nationwide, on a rotating basis. And he would somehow like to see his remarkable collections of things -- he has created hundreds of little 3D worlds of things he loves and has observed somehow archived and available to people. Mike winced as he rattled off the list. It was like he needed to place 5,000 of his own children in foster homes, ASAP.
So much to ask -- but they were his children, for pete sake. Otherwise, he would die, and all that beautiful stuff would follow him up the chimney.
This is the struggle we all face as we contemplate mortality. But not all of us have a basementful of beautiful objects. I asked him a hypothetical question: “If you had 1,000 openings nationwide, would you attend them?�
Mike smiled miserably. “No. I would not attend any of them.� He knew his personality and his values well. But there was this aching conflict. He wanted his art to live, but he didn’t want to engage in the usual pleasantries of shaking hands and drinking box wine.
“I’m like you,” he said to me. “We came up as hippies. We had this notion of a life lived consciously, of honoring the rights of others, of shunning violence -- and perhaps above all, of maintaining purity, of living authentically.” Schmoozing to promote the work, he was saying, compromised the truth of the work. And anyway, he was really no good at that kind of stuff.
I believed him. I asked Mike why he tended to write not about himself, but others.
“I recently read that the reason we know so little about Shakespeare is because he didn’t write about himself. He wrote about others. There’s a lesson in there.”
People die, he said. But art dies, too, unless it is cared for. Digitizing everything doesn’t preserve it in its true form. And even digitized data dies over time. We talked on and on about this. Mike surprised every now and then by whipping out a pocket-size spiral notebook and writing down something I said or he said. You know, memorable moments. Every time he wrote something of mine down was like a dog treat. I wanted
him to do it again! We talked about health problems, about the difficulty of obtaining grants these days, about whose work we admired and whose we could live without -- you know, gossip.
Breakfast sped by, and the sun climbed high over Cleveland Avenue. Mike, being an Irishman in the sun, began to fester and bubble. I was enjoying our talk and did not want it to end. If it ended then, it would go down as an A minus talk -- stimulating, but a little short. I suggested we go across the street to the Tea Source, and drink iced redberry tea inside, away from the sun. Much depended on this moment. Mike agreed!
We crossed the street -- motorists were honoring pedestrians crossing on an individual basis -- and ordered two cold ones. We talked on and on. All festering had subsided. Mike kept whipping out his notebook and jotting things down. I was overjoyed! There is nothing greater than meeting interesting people, doing their best to be good. I thought it was interesting that we both went by Mike, not Michael. Michael always seems kind of lofty, like an archangel or some guy in a Joni Mitchell song. Mike is more of a bartender’s name, down to earth. It’s less -- I don’t know. I offered Mike a deal. I would write what I call a B1 feature -- full page profile, just like in the Sunday
edition. And throw in some pictures and some of Mike’s poems. That’s what this is.
Some Poems of Mike Hazard
THE WAR WITHOUT END Crickets sing the fall’s here. The computer whines whenever it is on. White noise, it is. In a black hole, we are. Lately, I don’t even want a piece of me.
EMINENCE GRISE Your hair is grey, Dad. Yup. My Dad was white-haired at 46. Umm. It looks distinguished.
EVENT Grey squirrel. White cat. Black thoughts.
SO BE IT Cheered by, I cheered a cheery robin, singing at the top of his voice, atop an antenna atop our neighbor’s home. The bird was singing to the moon, rising. I joined in, humming along, a duet. If this is the end of time so be it.
MY FIVE YEAR OLD DAUGHTER REVIEWS HER FIRST POETRY READING Dad, that was fun. Let’s not do it again.
BEAUTIFUL NATURE Are you worried sick? In the waiting room at the clinic, a man smiled. I said it’s a beautiful day. Raising his arms like a poet poeting, spreading wide as a raptor’s wings, he spoke. Yes. Nature. I love nature. I wanted to make a picture. He shook his head, no. No. I guessed he might be one of the 250,000 Salvadoreans
America is threatening to deport. I mimed a click and said I’ve made a picture in my head. We smiled. It’s a beautiful day. We beamed like sunbeams in the waiting room at the clinic. It’s our beautiful nature.
I STILL LIKE TOMORROW Stories are shared at Peace House, the living room of Franklin Avenue. People speak and we, the people listen. Near the end of a meditation, Soynavong Sivo Ravong witnessed murders, violence, and the hell that has been happening and will. Then he ended, “I still like tomorrow.” Born in Laos, he fought the Vietnam War. It’s the war we must remember is
also known as the American War. “I stole a canoe to get out of Thailand. I came to the US in 1980. I work with fiberglas in Lakeville.� He still likes tomorrow.
Plus if you order today, you get these four lovely Poems for Tressa!
QUEEN OF HEARTS for Tressa
We live in a house of hearts in the heartland. Heroine of my heart, which was being attacked by ldl cholesterol and plaque, she took me to the hospital where a king of hearts
slipped a dancing dervish of a wire up an artery in my groin, in my groin, and inserted two stents, inflated one balloon, and opened my arteries, opened my heart. Throughout the whole, my sweetheart was there, a queen of hearts. She saved, saves my life
to love, live, and be loved. In a house of hearts in the heartland we love.
A DOOZY OF A DO-SI-DO Dancing makes the cookies better, Tressa said, dancing in the kitchen, as we mixed up the cookie dough with a doozy of a do-si-do.
To be cheeky, I pretended to be caught with a cookie squirreled away in my cheek.
My sweetheart, sweeter than a hot peanut butter cookie with a kiss,
was so happy, we cried out loud, dancing makes the best cookies.
HEART OF GOLD My honey has a heart of gold.
Preparing the hyacinth, harbinger of spring, her inner gold was flashing in the honeyed sunlight.
Of a sudden, the golden wrapping turned into an angel on the wing
so I sang, sing
My angel has a heart of gold.
HIGH ON HYACINTH High on hyacinth, I whistle and hum. In your hands, Tressa, I am handsome. We make love like there is no tomorrow. We fit together, made for each other to make love. When we were falling in love, we made love every perfumed night. Everything I knew about my body was not true. In your hands, Tressa, I am handsome. High on hyacinth, I whistle and hum.
Kraken Press St. Paul