“His soul goes marching on…”
-“John Brown’s Body”, American Folk Song
HI, HOW ARE YOU?
Today is the musician and artist Daniel Johnston’s birthday and the official day for the “Hi, How Are You?” Project! My father has written about Daniel before in his blog, Daniel is a person who lived with serious mental illness and was also a huge influence on myself and my own artwork and music. I was lucky enough to see him in person, before he died on September 11th, 2019.
I am taking over the blog on this website from my father, who wrote about our struggles with serious mental illness in his book, CRAZY, which many of you are familiar. My name is Kevin “Earthday Earleybird” Earley, and despite living with serious mental illness, which I take medication for daily, I am a musician and artist in my own right.
During the day, I work as a peer support specialist for Arlington County, Virginia, and music is something I do in my spare time. My story was also recently told in the Ken Burns’ produced documentary, HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT – Youth Mental Illness, for which my involvement, (In addition to personal testimony interviews, I created artwork, music and lyrics for the film) I was invited to the White House.
