STORIES FROM THE BIG APPLE
A must read for anyone who has ever lived in New York and for anyone who has traveled and likes to travel. ‘Stories from the Big Apple and Beyond’ is the second memoir from John R Drake. The stories take us from the Bi-Centennial of 1976 in New York up till the tragic event of 9/11. Drake captures the nitty - gritty feel of the “Big Apple” of the “downtown life”- remnants of Bob Dylan’s days and left over’s from the Beat Generation, which has now disappeared forever.Working in the film business for this period in time, Drake’s book gives us a look into the world of film. Starting as an electrician he works later as a gaffer, then a cinematographer and eventually finds himself directing commercials for a living. As in his other book, his wanderlust takes the reader back to India, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Bali and many other places - some for work and other times for the sheer adventure of travel, still trying to keep the freewheeling, fun - loving abandonment of the sixties and seventies alive.The photographs and poems all help to capture the feel of over two and a half decades of the seventies and eighties when the world seemed a saner and more hospitable place to live.
THE LAUGHING MAN
Cinematographer, Photographer, Poet and Painter, puts together this hilarious first book about his life growing up in England in the swinging sixties. His various jobs as a photographer - travels through Europe and the Greek Isles, life in Goa, India, a trans-Atlantic voyage on a freighter to Jamaica, work as a Bible salesman in the Dominican Republic and a journey through America from Miami to Minneapolis ending up in the film business in North Carolina, all before the age of 25.
POEMS FROM A STRANGER
A collection of poems from sixteen to senility.Early poems from 16 at school as we had to learn about the English poets such as Tennyson, Wordsworth Keats Shelley etc.poetry is spontaneous expression, a means of being able to tell a story within a few lines, a subconscious way of taking us out of normal thought .. A desire to know the unknown, which we will never know.