We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Billy Lamont. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Billy below.
Billy, appreciate you joining us today. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?
Hi Kristen :)! Thank You for the opportunity to correct my mistakes with spacing that I realize I made when doing this interview. It also gave me the opportunity to tweek/revise a little of the wording of my interview answers to help it flow better. Also I resent the one photo that appears in the article upside down, and is attached for clarity and your convenience.
THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!
I REALLY LOVE this interview!
& Thank You again for helping me with corrections!
Corrections Below.
LOVE, HEALTH & PEACE TO YOU
& Everyone At CANVAS REBEL,
[poet billy lamont]
We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Billy Lamont. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Billy below.
Billy, appreciate you joining us today. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?
Hello Everyone :) It’s my pleasure to be with you today. My name is Billy Lamont, and I am a NY based American Poet, Recording Artist, and Multi Media Performance Poet.
It is an honor, as well as very humbling for me, to be featured in your new amazing LA based CANVAS REBEL magazine, and during such an intense, devastating timing for all my wonderful sisters and brothers in LA, suffering and surviving such deep loss from the LA FIRES Tragedy. My heart is broken and very much with you all at this time. YOU fighting for survival, your family, communities, and all the first responder Firemen and Firewoman are REAL LIFE HEROES!!!
Please stay resilient and strong. It is my hope that by doing this interview, and sharing a few simple essence thoughts, that it can be inspiring to You in some small or great way, as rebuilding, and restoring your life to an even greater, meaningful place and home. <3
I learned to do what I do by imagining and creating it, and then by actively getting out there and performing it live, as a soulful expression of myself. Sometimes it was a very much in the moment kind of experiment too. In that process I got to know my gifts, as well as weakness,’ and each shaped me, my art, my life, and vision. This alchemy in the mashup beautiful mess of my passion, and ideas, would transform into strengths, my style and character, and even my naiveté and vulnerabilities, shaped me. Perhaps I was most shaped and propeled by my naïveté, weakness’ and vulnerabilities,
because they were all a part of a new dream.
What really mattered was that I was in motion, with faith and vision. I found lack of self awareness, and fear, including insecurities, can be the biggest obstacles that myself, or any artist, and creators can face. I wrote, thought and lived the phrase, “Faith with action is alive!” and I was in motion!
As a creative I knew and was inspired by Albert Einstein’s thought “Imagination is better than knowlegde.”
As I sometimes touched innovation in what I now call my sacred pop art, one day I wondered if i could expand on this thought and wrote it into a proverb-like poem:“imagination.” imagination, with wisdom. as well as knowledge, to pioneer and innovate, this is the distance and difference between doing something merely good and being Great!!! [billy lamont]
I thought did i just collaborate with the genius of Einstein Lol :), in some small way, by adding wisdom to the mix? I continued to think that maybe by adding wisdom, I have been graced with, to Einstein’s profound thought, perhaps I could share my thought to help focus and inspire students, or other creatives in the arts, or those using their gifts in business, science, sports, or in all other fields, to innovate and reach new heights in their field, and life, which would enrich all of our lives.
I also contemplated that being “Great” is not only innovating and pioneering, but can be much more grounded, and simple, but no less profound. Mother Theresa said something very empowering when contemplated, that “being Great is doing something with great LOVE.”
Perhaps these essence thoughts about imagination with wisdom, as well as knowledge, and how being Great is doing something with GREAT LOVE, can be some type of small seeds of inspiration for the great future of LA brothers and sisters, as they now travel through terrible loss and trauma, but together in community. <3
Billy, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Yes, I would love to. :) My poetry career has had an innovative edge so far. This includes my experimental poetry on the written page in my published books, and as a professional spoken word performance poet on the stage in live performances, and as a recording artist that combined my poetry with electronic music while it was still a new canvas. Then I expanded this vision to a William Blake-like mystical inspiration creating my 40 minute performance poem I called ‘The World’s First Spoken Word Rock Opera’ titled – THE GALLERY OF LIGHT- with electronic, ambient and world music soundscape, as well as using visual layers of photographic slides during live performances. Then came the following album/multimedia performance show – BEYOND BABYLON – with it’s performance poetry, music and film synchronized. Now my latest book is – WORDS RIPPED FROM A SOUL STILL BLEEDING: POEMS FOR THE FUTURE EDITION – breaking down the fourth wall of performance, art, perception and culture! I have three major book releases and nine album/cd/digital releases as a recording artist.
I am currently excited about some new projects and working on two new books and a new album! It feels like I am entering a new artistic period!
As a professional American performance poet based in NY, I have a reformer spirit, and recite for justice causes many times with an international reach. I have been interviewed and performed on national television a number of times, including Joe Franklin Show, MTV, and MUCH MUSIC Television broadcast from Toronto, Canada.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
The most rewarding aspect of being an artist for me is being empowered to help be a voice for everyday people, or help them in some way when they are in need. Right now LA friends, brothers and sisters are heavy, heavy on my heart, and in my prayers with the horrible LA Fires. Many are creatives, writers, filmmakers, actors, directors, recording artists, everyday people that have lost their lives, homes, livelihoods, and communities. I am someone well acquainted with trauma, whether from September 11th in NY, or overcoming other life traumas growing up, or just the focused, disgusting harassment I have been suffering and enduring recently and now, in my personal life from some who wish to do nothing more than harm me in some way. This unfortunately is the all too common sickness and drive of some in our culture right now, and we all need to do our part to heal,
and reform this to the best of our ability. LOVE is powerful, & transformative, along with PEACE
LOVE always wins!!! <3 <3 <3
I was asked to do this interview for your excellent,
new, inspiring LA magazine CANVAS REBEL prior to the devastating LA FIRES, & want to send my LOVE & Prayers to my loved Brothers and Sisters In LA, and to say “There Is Hope!!! & I LOVE YOU!!!& LOVE & Community Will Be Your/Our Overcoming Resilience!” <3 <3 <3
For those who do not live in LA but are reading this:
If You Can Please Give A Simple
Gift Of What You Can To: https://fireaidla.org/ to help lend a hand. It would be greatly appreciated. They did an amazing star studded FIRE AID LA 6 hour concert that you can stream for some soul inspiration.
Also I was watching a great and informative youtube video of Char Miller, Professor of Environmental Analysis and History, at Pomona College, discussing the present, past, and future of wildfires in America that CA Father Joshua Lickter, Human Rights Director, Assembly for Human Rights. kindly recommended and I’m glad he did! Professor Miller certainly cut through all the propaganda B.S. stories surrounding these tragic LA wildfires. https://youtu.be/qET_yWiGNCc
*Another great choice to contribute a little to help
those in need from LA Fires if you can is World Central Kitchen,CA : https://wck.org/ a community foundation; Hope: the mission.
LOVE, LIFE & PEACE To You! <3 <3 <3 Hang Tough! LOVE You LA!!!
[poet billy lamont]
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
My goal has always been to give people hope. Also to encourage their unique gifts and dignity. I value them and their gifts as a soulful human, and what they can contribute to humanity, and not their all too commonly
stolen robotic analytics as a money making commodity. The irony of all this is when You have something unique, that meets a need in an individual, society, a family, a business, money does tend to arrive to prosper you. So an underlying goal for me has become to be at liberty, to live and create, and travel freely, and be able to follow inspirations at will, as also being a blessing to others, –
to be a joyful giver, instead of an in debt victim of irresponsible lending, as well as borrowing, or worse a fascist greed survivor. I am still working on this one but aware and moving forward! :)!
LOVE & LIFE To You,
[billy lamont] xo
Contact Info:
- Website: http://billylamont.net/
- Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/poetbillylamont
- Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/poet.lamont
- Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/@TOPm777
- Other: To email Billy Lamont at THE OTHER PERSPECTIVE MEDIA: or Join email list: [email protected]
Image Credits
Robyn Carlene, Hardcore Shutterbug Steven J. Messina, Rory MacNish, Matt Proctor, Em Kruz, Rachel Lickter, Su Polo, Camera Jockey, David Dephy, Margarette Wahl, Jay Jii, Judy Turek, BethAnne Magazzo