I’m a musician and writer who lives in Los Angeles. I swim almost every day. If I don’t, I become homicidal. (Actually, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. If I don’t swim, I go for a long walk. If I don’t walk, then I become homicidal. I need my endorphins.)
Since 1997, I’ve studied about and performed as Pierre Cruzatte, the fiddler and main boatman with the Lewis & Clark Expedition. Now that the bicentennial is over, I’m writing a new show. It’s going to be a sort of aural history of California, i.e. it’ll be about the usual suspects — Cabrillo, Serra, Sutter, etc. — but will include lots of music and song.
I’ve been writing this show on and off for about three years now. I find myself continuing in the footsteps of Meriwether Lewis, the man who not only led the greatest journey of exploration in American history, but who may have performed American history’s greatest feat of procrastination. After returning to St. Louis in September of 1806, Lewis was supposed to edit and publish the Lewis & Clark Expedition’s journals, but he probably never even opened them. Thomas Jefferson would ask him, “when do I get to see the journals?” “Keep your pants on, they’re almost done,” Lewis assured him, “they’re almost done.” No one published a complete version until 100 years after the expedition ended.
Captain Lewis had many good excuses to not write. I don’t have so many but hope to document the ones I do have in this space (and maybe write a show about California in the meantime).
E-mail me at cruzatte@cruzatte.com
