Thank you for considering a donation. Any amount is welcome, no
matter how small - but here's why and what it will be spent on.
And, like all starving artists, I was for a long time3 genuinely
starving - more often
than not.......but it's too long a story to whine about here but fate
has wound up with me in a care home years before I expected to be,
dealing with life stuck in a wheeelchair.
Let's just say I'd be glad of any and all support, in whatever
form. Chickens can't
be mailed, however, but money's much preferable. Direct
sponsorship for a full-time physio to get me walking again and a
mechanized wheelchair or, if I get to walk again after five or so years
of being unable to, purchase of an exoskeleton
to enable me to go to the gym again and hike or even ski, and most
importantly to be able to dance again once I have time/room to get back
to my guitar or even to re-buy my long-sold-for rent Kurzweil
PC 2X
which I'd bought brand-new for 4500 Cdn not including the stand or p.a.
and sold for 1500 in deal with a music shop on Alma at West 10th (Rufus
Guitar Shop, which I just found out closed in Feb 25, 2025) which got
me a Jay Turser strat copy and a portable amp and small case,
eventually improved by what became my trademark, a Danelectro Honeytone
1.8watt mini-amp.
I don't feel aged or kicking off anytime soon, and want to be as
productive as possible and maybe with enough support or a real live
angel, I'd even be able to travel again beyond BC. If you
don't hope, and you don't ask, nothing will happen..... other than me
being completely annyoying with politics and history and poetry and
rehashing/expecting my science fiction/fantasy writings, long in
abeyance because of life-demands that I give up my airy-fairy talents
and "get a real job" in a province that's not exactly friendly for the
gifted or the too-intelligent who don't fit the proscribed local mold.
That's not a whine, it's a statement of cruel fact.
I'm making effort to find ways to run my Reverbnation and Soundcloud
and soon-to-be Bandcamp music sites for pay, and my poetry pages here
are going to be teasers with previews linking to per-folio digital
chapbooks.
And at present I'm working on transcribing my song lyrics as a few
people I know would like to cover certain ones..... ironic
that it took being wheelchair-bound to make me focus on all the
organization and digital infrastructure that's always needed getting
done.
My long search for a publisher, never mind a patron or mentor, I've
resolved to working on self-publishing.... my poetry I "gave away for
free" in my earlier website but it brought me a following in the US and
in Europe - but not in Canada.
Not so far anyway, but it's a truism in Canada that once you're
famous somewhere else, you'll be celebrated once you come back; maybe,
that is..... some of my essayist writings are about this, most has not
yet been published but certain poems are all about it, notably the one
that begins:
If one cants of olden
days
and cries, to hail the western breeze,
then leave him not on winter's ways -
lend him a cloak, lest he must freeze!
Let him have his pen
and keep,
Give him draught to slake his thirst,
Let him drink so that his heart might leap,
Give him feast, lest should his hunger burst.
He wants no pillar, no
marbled name,
He only wants sweet living's means.
His craft is faltered, his talent lamed,
but thicker sinew could he grow on lean.
He'll sing to you in
splendid tale
and add honour to your house;
Although his words might sometimes fail
a few days of splendour he might rouse.
("Enconium" in Odes and Orisons)
The
intent of all my websites has alwasy been non-profit, not commercial,
although it would
of
course be nice if I earned enough from donations to live on; but it's
time to feel validated by an income for all I've done and may - will -
yet more do.
I love
playing music
more than anything else, and would rather be doing it for a living -
writing is more of a duty; peotry more of an affliction.... "I did not
ask to be born into this age, or saddled by a Tongue".
In
the meantime I kept hearing "you'd better get a part-time job
etc."......
I do not have available any online payment methods, so for now please
use my mailing address at
11746 - 209th Street
Maple Ridge BC
Canada V2X 7S7
I am trying to find a donation website other than Patreon, as its
payout is via PayPal and I don't want to pay a royalty to Peter Thiel,
who I view as a moral force for no good and too many plans for
the world that are rankly evil.
Personal cheques are OK but money orders preferred, especially from
abroad; for ease of
cashing
(especially if from outside North America; US donors please use money
orders
even though US cheques can be accepted in Canada; but they take
cheques
can take over a month to clear from this end.
Unless instructed otherwise, I will append donors' names to this page
as acknowledgement, with my thanks.
Significant corporate or other private sponsorship will of course be
visibly acknowledged, if desired, with a discreet notice/link , but it
is my hope to keep such notices
discreet and avoid
the intrusiveness of banner or pop-up windows as much as possible,
other than for businesses in the Bridge River-Lillooet or wanting to
target that market.
Thank you for any and all assistance.
Sincerely
Mike Cleven