The Wages of Din are Deaf

History

2011-09-25T23:14:00.001+10:00

Illuminated manuscripts entrance me. I once sat in a tiny park next to a busy arterial road so engrossed in a folio sized book about the Lindisfarne Gospels that I didn’t notice the light was failing until I couldn’t read the text anymore. It had nothing whatever to do with the subject matter of those manuscripts, I’ve never been religious, but for some reason that style of illustration triggers in me a sense of history like nothing else.

Years later my girlfriend, eventually my wife, wrangled a work sponsored trip to VeloCity, the world cycling conference when it was being held in Dublin, Ireland. She asked if I wanted to go along and I struggled for an answer because the cost was prohibitive. The tipping point came when I realised that I could see the Book of Kells.

It’s housed at Trinity College in it’s own special exhibit. It’s a good bit of theatre that exhibit. You walk in through a maze-like set of rooms with the history of the book, the places and history of where it’s been kept covering the walls with text and pictures.

The room in which the book, or rather the pages that are being displayed at that time, resides is dark with down lights shining on a flat glass display case the size of a moderate kitchen table. When I reached that room the display was completely surrounded. The small throng was slowly circling it counter clockwise, there were several other illuminated works to view. I got into the circle and was working my way towards the Kells pages but got more and more annoyed as people would enter the room and rather than get in the queue they would push in right where the Kells pages were.

Realising that I was getting so annoyed that I wouldn’t enjoy the experience anyway, I bailed and went to look at what else there was to see. This mostly consisted of The Long Gallery in which hundreds if not thousands of antique volumes are kept. It was practically empty and it was a bibliophiles absolute nightmare. All those treasures, literally just out of reach protected only by a dusty velvet rope. Well a rope and a guard.

We got to chatting with the guard and at one point I mentioned my frustration in not being able to see the Book of Kells. My wife, being a more practical sort, asked him when was it not busy. He looked at his watch and said “Well, right about now is usually not too bad.”

He was right. I walked in and there was only one other person. I got to stand and gaze at that illuminated piece of history for maybe five minutes undisturbed.

It was different than looking at reproductions even though it was behind glass. Profound. Moving. I think the main difference is that seeing the physical object that was created with so much love and skill so very long ago makes the passage of time real in a way that reproduction cannot. It is essentially different because all those years happened to that actual object right there and because that object is indisputably real then those years are made real too. And in exactly the same way it makes the artist who painted it real.

It’s not mysticism, it’s not metaphysics, but it is emotion, very human emotion. In order to connect with things as abstract as memory and history sometimes we need a real, physical object to remind us of the reality of the past.

2011-09-23T00:29:00.001+10:00

Heh, I left the last post on what has to be the lamest cliff-hanger ending of all time. Did the power go out, or didn't it? The tension of not knowing must be unBEARable. :)

Actually, it never went out fully. We had an 8 hour brown out that went in two stages. The first happened just after the lights went out and came back on the first time. I didn't really notice that the voltage had dropped because the lights came back on. It seemed a little strange when I couldn't get the TV to come back on but we have it plugged into an after market remote switching plug and I figured that was buggered. It seemed a little more strange first time I tried to turn back on a light I'd just turned off and it wouldn't ignite. The second time was definitely creepy and the third was downright scary.

And then I realised what was going on. Compact florescent bulbs require a little extra kick of energy to ignite and while there was enough voltage to keep them going there wasn't enough to start them. Neat.

After about a half hour of that the power dropped noticeably over ten seconds or so and everything went dark. I thought that was that, full blackout, but then I stepped around the corner and the tiny led night light we leave in the hall was still as bright as ever. The house was getting just enough power to light one led but no more. I wonder just how that happens? How could we end up with a voltage so low that I could probably stick my tongue in a socket and only get a little tingle? Weird.

Anyway, when it was still out in the morning I called the power company because their website didn't list any power outage in our area. The guy on the phone was a little dismissive once he knew where I was calling from, it had already been reported. Full power came back maybe 10 minutes after I hung up. I could think of that call as a complete waste of time.....or, I could think that I have such a commanding, authoritative phone presence that they fixed it right quick because of me. Uh, yeah.....we'll go with that shall we?

2011-09-19T23:25:00.001+10:00

My mother is very much on the mend. She goes home in the next couple of days. They're still unsure if she's going to have to have an oxygen feed with her at home, but other than that things are looking good.

I've been thinking about how we know stuff. It seems to me that the distinction between belief and knowledge is getting blurrier or even getting lost outright more and more. Mind you, this may be an artefact of changes in myself. To be clear, belief is what a person holds to be true, knowledge is a belief supported by evidence.

Over the last couple of years I've become involved in the skeptic and atheist communities on-line. I've always been fascinated by science so this is a pretty natural progression. The fundamental difference this has made in me is that it's focused my attention on what I believe, and more importantly, why I believe what I do.

Skepticism is not cynicism, nor is it disbelief for its own sake. It concerns a rational, evidenced based epistemology. The basic tenet is that in order to accept something as true the claim has to be logically consistent and have credible evidence to support it. The goal is to make one's beliefs and congruent with reality as possible. To have knowledge rather than beliefs. You wouldn't think that such a thing would be controversial, and you would be wrong about that. But that's another story for another time.

Being a skeptic isn't necessarily easy. Take a look at this list of cognitive biases. They are all the ways that your brain is programmed to deceive you. Even being aware of them is not a guarantee that one won't get fooled. The most insidious one for me is confirmation bias. The only defence is to be very careful when one hears things that agree with an already held belief.

Another key component of skepticism is that one must be willing to change one's beliefs as new evidence comes available. You wouldn't think that this notion would be controversial either, and again, you'd be wrong. I've been involved in a discussion about gender stereotypes over the last couple of days. One participant claimed as a fact that women speak more than men. I did some research on pubmed and found that there are a couple of recent studies that showed that there isn't any significant differences in word counts between the genders. The woman making the claim is refusing to acknowledge that her belief might be wrong because she was taught this "fact" in the course of getting a university degree in communications.

Bah, the power just went out. Oop, and now it's back. I don't hold much hope it will stay on though. It's blowing pretty hard out there. One of the joys of country life is that when the power goes out we lose our water because we pump it out of a bore. Every time the wind picks up in any serious way we fill a couple of buckets so we can still flush the toilet and we top up the big water filter so we have plenty of drinking water in reserve. I also put a torch in my pocket a couple of hours ago, just in case.

I better finish up so I can save the battery on the laptop.

The final thing that's necessary to be a skeptic is the ability to say "I don't know." and be comfortable with that. There are two reasons for this. One is that here is so much we are still trying to figure out. We don't know exactly how our brains function for instance. We've got some good ideas but there's much we still don't know. In the absence of facts the most rational thing to say is "I don't know." and leave it at that until new information comes along.

The other reason is that there just isn't enough time to research everything. Not for most folks anyway, certainly not for me. On topics that I've not had time to look into it's far more practical and honest for me to simply accept my lack of knowledge. Speculation is fun of course, but that comfort with the unknown means that I never have to be stressed by what I'll find if I'm forced to look into a new subject.

Dang, laptop battery is below half and the the lights are flickering again. Later.

2011-09-14T19:57:00.001+10:00

Oh go on, say it. :)

2011-09-14T00:38:00.001+10:00

Ah well, it was a good run, nothing really to say today.

There's something peaceful about writing here knowing that whatever audience I had is long gone. It feels like when I first started. So in honour of that:

I'm 13 bars into a composition, and I do mean composition. I've had three, maybe four, key changes already depending on how I harmonise that last bar of melody. And none of them are your godawful "play the same thing in the dominant" sort of change. Almost every motif or melody fragment is a variant of something that's come before. I'm just now starting the section where everything moves as far away from the original theme as I can get while still being able to justify to myself that it comes from that theme. (Yah, it's going to be a short thing, maybe 3 minutes max.) I predict key changes aplenty as I reach for notes that are not there in whatever key I happen to be in. Ol' Bach did this all the time so why can't I? After all, I'm alive. Him? Not so much.

Is it any good? Damned if I know and double damned if I care*. Will you ever hear it? Eh, not likely. No one within any reasonable commute of here has ever heard of this blog. The plan is that it'll get one public performance and that's it. And the audience for that will be about equal to the number of people who'll read this. :)

*Okay, that's a lie, sort of. I'm not too worried at how well it turns out, but of course I do want it to be as good as possible. It's just that I'm aware that there's nothing riding on it, if it fails, it fails. I'll just move on and write something else. If it's turning out pretty good, then I'll re-write and revise until I can't improve it. Getting older rocks, having more perspective on this sort of thing makes it so much easier.

Remember

2011-09-12T23:58:00.001+10:00

Could they have known? Those 19 crazed, homicidal humans, drunk on religion and righteousness, could they have know just how much they'd change the world? I doubt it, though I suspect they hoped as much.

I'm not naive, nor am I unaware of the world outside North America. People all over the world lived with fear and uncertainty long before that that one day in September where just how violent a world we live in was driven home . Hell, there are even plenty of people, the destitute and desperate poor of North America, who knew this fact long before that day. The ability to turn groups of humans into the "other", into less than you are, is all that's needed to commit atrocities. Once you've done that, the rest is just planning and logistics.

I wish to live in a world where the only requirements to be ingroup is to have human DNA and act as if all people are of equal worth. I don't even care that everyone actually believes that we're all equal, just that they act as if we are. And isn't it a condemnation of the society in which I live that I feel the need to define what "all people" means?

To this end, I beg you, the next time you find yourself using the word "they", stop. Stop and think about the group you're talking about. Think about why you've grouped them together. Take a moment to remember that no matter how different you think they are, they're all still human. They had a mother and a father, they eat and sleep and desire. They are most likely more similar to you than they are different. And yes, I did this when I thought about the 911 hijackers. Remembering that they are human too does not excuse what they did. Remembering their humanity reminds me that I too can make people into the "other". It reminds me that I have to better than that.

That's the lesson of 911 for me. I will remember.

Craziness Update

2011-09-12T00:35:00.000+10:00

I forgot to post this when it happened. The crazy commenter who first showed up here, and again here, this time with a death threat, was arrested and is now in psych evaluation. Despite being a little flippant about him initially, I sincerely hope he's now going to get the help he needs. And I do think that though I was never worried about his death threats, those who lived nearer to him were right to be concerned.

No More Lies

2011-09-11T23:42:00.000+10:00

I don't know.
No, really.
I don't know.

Three little words.
No. Contraction.
Four little words.

How much misery?
No, seriously.
How much pain?

Made up stories.
No truth.
Couldn't say them.

Those four little words:

I do not know.

Hooray!

2011-09-11T00:23:00.000+10:00

Well, my mother's condition, while still serious, has now entered the realm of comedy. When I called her this morning I didn't get an answer. After a couple of tries I called the nurse's station. A rather abashed nurse told me that the overhead lift device that's used to get her in and out of bed had jammed and they were in the process of extracting her.

My brother had also showed up just as they were preparing to get her out and then the phone began ringing over and over again. Those poor nurses. Anyway, all was sorted. Mum's on her third type of antibiotic and it seems to be working. The blood infection she had has been cured and slowly the extra fluid they made her retain to raise her blood pressure is draining. Not a moment too soon because it was exacerbating the pneumonia. Cautious optimism is the order of the day.

One serendipitous thing was that my niece was there too. I haven't talked to her in a couple of years I think. She's now in grade 11 and of course I had to ask what she was planning for after graduation. I loved how ready she was for that question. I remember how it was for me, it got so I could recite my plans without actually thinking about it. Plus ca change..

But there's a big difference between my plan, such as it was, and hers. She's planning on becoming a teacher and has figured out all she has to do to achieve that. Fan-fucking-tastic! I almost said that out loud to her and I'm afraid I did exclaim and babble a bit. Ah well, I am the strange uncle with the ungodly ideas who lives overseas. I do have a reputation to uphold after all.

I was honestly happy though. You see, there is nothing more important than education to the future of humanity. Nothing has ever been improved on this planet of ours by a lack of education. And Canada, and much of the western world come to that, needs all the teachers it can get. And even better, in this case we're going to be getting someone who's not only focused, and I believe capable the kind of dedication that job requires, but we're getting one who's really, really smart.

My niece and nephew are a couple of the brightest kids I know. Sure I'm biased, but I also value my honesty enough to not let that get in the way too much. Besides, all the stuff I've learned about critical thinking over the last few years keeps me very aware of my cognitive biases.

I pay a lot of attention when I'm around my brother's kids because I see them so seldom. The questions they ask, and don't ask, the way they ask them and how they understand the answers leads me to believe that those two are pretty bloody bright.

So, hooray for humanity. If she goes through with it, it'll be one small but oh so important step forward in our progress as a species. And hell, even if she doesn't I'm pretty sure no matter what path she choses it will be one that will benefit greatly from her being on it.

Universal Daughter

2011-09-09T22:57:00.000+10:00

The bed is too small for all three of us now.
Mum sits on the floor while I read.
You love your stories, "Daddy! Not like that!"
Except when I try a little voice acting.

The bed is warm but the wall chills my spine.
Mum's toasty in front of the heater.
You look at me, nose inches from mine.
Except for misty eyes no one would know:

I gaze upon a universe of potential and it fills me utterly.

Joy is too small a word.

Silly

2011-09-08T23:33:00.000+10:00

My daughter likes to smile, squint one eye in an attempt at a wink, hold out a big thumbs up and roll her stomach muscles. Seriously. Picture a four year old girl with pig tails, a dimple and this expression:

Subtract the pointing and add some seriously flexible stomach contortions.

She taught herself the tummy roll after watching Sesame Street where apparently some guest did it, the rest is a bit of a mystery. She always asks "Why are you laughing Daddy?" Which of course makes me laugh more. How the hell can I answer that question?

I've made an effort to always be as complete and honest with her as I can when she asks me questions. She has a basic understanding of sex for instance. Not the act, but only because it hasn't come up yet. It might never, we do live on a farm after all. But she does know that she grew in Mummy's tummy and that she started out as an egg from Mummy combined with a seed from Daddy. She also knows when our rooster is doing that to a hen he's trying to give his seed to her. I guess we will have to have a sex talk at some point, just to make sure that she understands that human sex isn't usually that quick, violent or one sided. :)

When she asks what things are called I also strive to use the real word even if it's polysyllabic. You'd be surprised at how fast she picks up even the most complex words. A four year old's brain has huge portions of it dedicated to language acquisition, might as well take advantage of that while it lasts.

But I am at a loss to explain to her why I find that particular performance so hilarious. I mean it just IS. Sometimes the only honest answer is "I don't know." Of course, it's tricky getting that out when you're snorting soy milk out your nose.

Movin' On

2011-09-07T23:32:00.000+10:00

One stereotype of ageing is the inevitable descent into curmudgeonhood. "Hey you kids, get offa my lawn!" "My yard, my ball!" For years I looked forward to this state. I loved the idea of dropping my filters and just letting fly whenever something irritated me. It seemed like it would take less energy than suppressing the annoyance that's inevitably generated by social interactions. What I didn't count on is that I'm getting less and less fussed by things as I get older.

I mean, it makes sense right? The older you get the more practice you get in dealing with the common annoyances. When I was younger I felt that the petty shit would eventually wear me down. It never occurred to me that I would instead get better and better at dealing with these things.

Part of it comes from being able to see that in daily life most people don't do things "to" me they do things "at" me. The only concretely objective action that one could do "to" me would involve physical force done against my will. A punch, slap or tickle for instance. I'm in the fortunate situation where words can only be done "at" me. But not everybody is in my privileged situation of course.

It's pure victim blaming to say that words can never hurt one. Of course they can, and it's almost impossible to keep from reacting negatively to some words. People who've been badly hurt often have triggers that crash them right back into a harmful emotional state. A phrase or a tone of voice that's intimately associated with painful past experiences is often such a trigger. For myself, the sound of cutlery or china being bashed immediately tenses me up. It makes me feel like the person doing it is mad at me regardless of whether or not they actually are. I don't think I have any trigger words though, and such words could be considered a "to" rather than an "at".

One of the big privileges of ageing is that things that are done "at" one get easier and easier to deal with. Insults hold no weight when you've heard them many times before. Provided of course you've also thought honestly about whether or not there's any truth to them. The moods of others are less affecting too, it's so much easier to see when someone's anger or sadness has nothing at all to do with you.

My future fantasy with those inaccurate ball throwing kids has changed dramatically. I don't think anymore that I'm likely to end up cornering the neighbourhood market in sporting projectiles. My hope is that while I'm throwing it back I can think of something to say that'll make 'em laugh, or groan. After all, the bad pun is the province of dads everywhere and dammit, I'm not one to drop that particular ball.

Life

2011-09-06T12:12:00.000+10:00

You know, I miss writing here. Of course, when I started it was the dark ages: pre-marriage, pre-child, pre-business. You'd think all those things would give me lots to talk about, and you'd be right. But they also take away the time that I once had. Ah well, life's like that.

Life is also like this: My mother is in the hospital with pneumonia and a mysterious anemia. At her age this sort of thing is quite serious, possibly end-of-life serious. I'm stuck on the other side of the world without the resources to just up and go. I'm not happy about this situation, but I accept it. I chose this life and therefor I accept the downsides that come with it. If she gets much worse or the doctors find something seriously wrong I'll find a way to get on a plane, but until then I have to rely on calling daily. It will do. I'm grateful that I don't live in an age where the first I heard about this would be a letter that was a month out of date.

I'm grateful too that she's in a place where the best possible care is available. If the worst happens and she dies I'll know that that there wasn't anything I could have done to help prevent that. I have no medical training. My only task in this is to provide what comfort I can. And while it would be better if I could be there in person I can in fact provide some small comfort by calling every day.

This might sound like I'm making excuses, and perhaps I am. But I strive to acknowledge and live with reality: the things that are objectively provable in our world. By doing so I find that while there can still be sadness, regrets even, there is little to no guilt. Should my Mum die before I manage to see her again I would regret that. I would be sad and I would mourn but I wouldn't feel guilty. The reality is that I can't get there at this time. The reality is that I cannot prevent her death by any action of my own. The reality is that I've said everything I need to say to her, and I've tried to give her the opportunity to say everything she needs to say to me.

I love my mother and she knows it. I forgive her any and all trespasses committed by her, real or perceived, and she know it. I am a healthy, good, successful individual who enjoys his life and she is responsible for that, despite the difficulties that my father's problems presented in raising me and my brother. She knows that I feel that way, though I'm not sure she believes it.

Death happens and despite that life goes on. When you don't believe that there's anything after death you have to do everything you can before that inevitable event, there are no second chances. Once you've got all the things that you'd regret not doing or saying before the end out of the way you're left with a freedom to be the best comfort you can be. It's a peaceful place to be, sad yes, but peaceful none the less.

Of course my mother's a tough old bird. She'll probably pull through and come here to read this and shake her head at her atheist son. And that'll be perfectly okay by me. :)

The End

2011-06-11T22:16:00.002+10:00

I just realized that I never followed up on the post about my friend. He died. That was given considering the state of his cancer, but what wasn't a given was the manner of his death. He spent the extra time he got after they fixed his cut carotid to reach out. It was amazing to watch, even through the tiny window of his Facebook wall. The real reconciliation, forgiveness even I hope, happened beyond public sight but the initial contacts often happened where we could all see it. He didn't die alone and he from the posts of those who were there with him at the end it seems he found some measure of peace.

But I will point out one thing that annoyed me. My friend was an atheist just as I am, he went as far as to described himself as a militant atheist. As his condition worsened and he could no longer respond directly more and more people put blatantly religious messages on his wall. I'm not talking about things like "We're praying for you." sentiments that are fully understandable and well meant. No, there were a bunch of posts that started with things like "Dear being of peace and light..." one of which was written by some kind of spiritual leader of one of his friends. That's going too far, way too far. If my friend had been healthy he would have expressed his displeasure at those sentiments in a way that would have been brutal, profane and very, very funny.

This is the oblivion of religious privilege, the inability to understand that while sincere best wishes are usually welcome by atheists even when religiously couched, proselytising is inappropriate. The deathbed conversion is a myth that religious folks repeat because facing death without a belief in an afterlife of some sort is incomprehensible to them.

I didn't take any of these folks to task for two reasons. First because I recognise that everyone grieves in their own way and despite the inappropriate nature of those posts no harm was intended. Second and most importantly, I couldn't speak for my friend in this matter. There is no atheist big book of multiple choice for me to consult. No dogma, no tradition, no religious formula to inform me. It would have been as inappropriate for me to speak for my friend without knowing his exact thoughts on the matter as it was for people to use his affliction to spread their dogma. Sometimes free thought is limiting and I wouldn't have it any other way.

As final thought I want to point out just how important Facebook was in all of this. He died at least in part in the pubic space of Facebook. A temporary community formed, and together we were stronger than we could have been alone. This is the true strength of humanity, our ability to reach out and help each other. Facebook gets a lot of criticism for its triviality, and perhaps that criticism is deserved. But in the end it's simply a means of communication and what is communicated is up to those who use it.

Complicated

2011-06-11T20:41:00.004+10:00

I just watched the Dr. Who episode "When a Good Man Goes to War". There's something about that phrase that moves me.

A good man, I like to think of myself as such. To be good is something I aspire to in all of my life. I work alone and I own the business, there's no oversight bar my wife who isn't there most days. I could easily tell folks that their bike requires repairs that they don't in fact need. I could even supply used parts from previous repairs to back up such claims. There is little chance I could get caught. I won't ever do that. I don't fear being caught, I don't fear punishment. I fear not being a good man. I fear it because the only thing that has stopped evil in all of history is the willingness of folks to be good.

I've never been in a war. I will never be in a war, not at my age, not as a combatant anyway. But I have been in mortal danger a time or two. I once worked a job where on multiple occasions I was robbed at knife point. The last time it happened I hit the guy and chased him out of the store. It was a dumb thing to do, I was very lucky I didn't get hurt, didn't get killed. I didn't do it because I was good, or because I wanted to do good. I did it because I suddenly realised he couldn't reach me. In that instant my fear turned to anger and I acted.

I make no claims that my experience is equivalent to going to war. But it was a taste of fear and danger that goes beyond the bounds of most daily life in the privileged western world in which I live. That act, hitting someone, lashing out, even though it was justified, it changed me. I knew then that I was capable of unthinking violence. I'd been in fights before as a teenager and during all of them all I wanted was for it to stop. No wonder I never won any of them. This was different.

When a good man goes to war, if he is indeed a good man, then he must believe that that war is justified. Even if that belief is correct that man can not help but to be changed. This is why we must go to war only with the greatest of reluctance and in full knowledge of the consequences. This too is why it is so important to be good, to strive to be good, because the veneer of civilization is so thin. We all have the capacity for all the possible actions people are capable of. To be anything less is to be less than human.

When a good man goes to war. That phrase touches me. So sad, so complicated, so human.

Ah Fuck.

2010-11-20T22:35:00.002+11:00

An old band mate of mine is in palliative care. He has four tumors eating his throat and face. From the sounds of it he hasn't much time left and I'm on the other side of the world.

I can't say I was a good friend for I wasn't. He had problems, bad problems with drugs that lead to a life that I could not, and would not, be a part of. I cut him loose and never really looked back. But now I am looking back and I've realized that many of the things that annoyed me the most about him were in fact his way of trying to help me.

Sure, his idea of helping was, for example, to suggest that heroin would be of some benefit to me. I said no for obvious reasons, but the strange thing is that he was right, or at least partly right. I was an insecure, uptight little tosser when we first met. And if there's one thing about heroin, it does mellow a person out.

I'm not being naive here, I know that part of his motivation was to have someone else share his addiction in order make some money to pay for said addiction. I know too that he wanted the people around him to act as he did in order to feel normal about his behavior. But when I put this incident together with all the other times he annoyed me enough to remember it these 20 years later, I realize that at the bottom of every incident there was always an intent, however small, to help.

I regret not noticing that sooner.

For all his faults, for all the damage he did to himself and others, he isn't an evil man. And now he's laying in a fogged stupor not of his own choosing, unlike all the ones that went before. He's laying there waiting for the cancer to cut his carotid artery again, or close off his esophagus, or to cause pain so unbearable that never fully awakening again is the only option.

He does not deserve this, and fuck any self-righteous pricks who dare to suggest that he does. I've heard that there have been a few of those around, even on his medical team. He's human, flawed to be sure, but no less deserving of love and compassion for all of that.

The Big Empty

2010-09-21T15:43:00.009+10:00

So, are you scared? Is the world too big for you, does it overwhelm you with its complexity.Yes? Well then, I suggest you stay far, far away from telescopes and microscopes.

The scale of the universe in which we live, from the outer reaches of observable interstellar space 46.5 billion lights years away to the Plank length infinitesimal minuteness of the subatomic realm is vast almost beyond comprehension. We as a species are not equipped to observe these extremes without resorting to instruments that enhance our senses to superhuman levels. And at the very outer edges of the largest and the smallest we have to rely on math to map and explain what is there. Those edges at present are beyond our ability to detect directly.

How do we cope with this near infinity that surrounds us? One option is to make stuff up, to invent a wise and benevolent entity that not only understands it all but is somehow responsible for it all. Then all one has to do is wrap one's self up in the warm security blanket of revealed wisdom to feel safe. Of course one has to ignore the fact that the blanket no longer stretches to cover lightning, earthquakes, floods and plagues. Or that the parts that used to cover the motions of the stars and planets, the seasons and eclipses are now just frayed holes. "Fine, fine." one could say "Static electricity, plate tectonics, the water cycle and germs are just the ways that our entity does things." But here's the rub, none of these things requires an entity to sustain them. They work just fine all by themselves. As our body of knowledge grows larger and larger the security blanket gets smaller and smaller until one is left twisting and turning, pulling the blanket here and there in a futile attempt to hide from the reality in which we live.

It's a vast, hostile universe in which we live, one that cares nothing for you or me. Less than nothing really, because that phrase "it cares nothing" is misleading. There is nothing there that is capable of caring one way or the other. And therein lies the joy.

You see, we're not alone and we're not helpless. We have each other and that's enough, more than enough. Don't believe me? Take someone you love by the hand, look in their eyes and say "I'm here." How big is the universe at that moment? How scary? Do you need your ragged and fading security blanket to warm you as arms, alive and real, hold you?

We're all together in the big empty and it's going to be alright.

More Adventures in the 3 Year Old's Brain

2010-08-29T23:16:00.002+10:00

Me: Em, just how did your toes get so big, hmmmm?

Em: I'm getting bigger.

Me: Yup, you are. How big are you going to get?

Em: Bigger, and bigger, and bigger, and bigger, and Bigger, And Bigger, AND Bigger, AND BIGGER, VERY BIG!

Me: [uncovers ears, starts to say "Not so loud" but is interrupted]

Em: I'm going to be as big as you Daddy!

Me: You might be.

Em: But with hair.

Squeeee!

2010-08-26T21:16:00.002+10:00

I'm so happy. I just got my first ranting anti-atheist comment, despite not having written much if anything about the subject here. Someone tracked me back from another website where I'd commented and left this incoherent screed. Hilarious.

Adventures in Oz

2010-06-17T22:18:00.001+10:00

This morning I had to get up and go deal with our pump yet again. For some reason the power to the shed where it's plugged in died. Might have had something to do with the rain and wind. What a great way to start the day and it only got better.

We had winds gusting to 100km/hr, driving rain and lightning in the afternoon. This in the equivalent of the northern hemisphere's December. It took down trees everywhere, the native vegetation park looked like the trees had been mown. We shut the shop at 2pm because there was no way the power was coming back any time soon. Fortunately, the worker responsible for clearing downed trees off our section of road used his head. He drove the dozer back to town along the rail trail. I'd brought a saw along just in case but I'm pretty sure it would have taken an hour or more to ride home if the trail hadn't been cleared. This on a ride that's normally 15 minutes.

The pub next door lost the roof from a bungalow out back and part of their front veranda. Tin from the bungalow roof ended up across the highway wrapped around a tree 10 meters off the ground. A house a couple of k away lost it's entire roof. We were lucky. All it did to our place is blow the back door open which fortunately is so far under a veranda that no water got in.

I went over to pub to see if they needed any help. Here's what I love about country life: as I talked to the owners maybe half a dozen people pulled up to see if they could help. Everyone was touching base and making sure everyone else was okay. Sure, a lot of these folk are rough as guts but they care about and look after each other.

We dug out some candles and our torches for light. I trudged across the highway to the creek and filled some buckets so we could flush the toilet. Claire made dinner on the barbeque and we ate by candle light. Our pre-bed play with Em consisted entirely of games where she got to sit in my lap.

Me: Emlyn, it's 10 degrees in here, you need warmer clothes.
Em: No, I'm warm.
Me: Yes, put on this jumper...
Em. No, no, No, NO!
Me: Look, if you're not cold why does every game involve you sitting in my lap?
Em: Cuddle me

She did tell me a fabulous story though. She gave me a piece of paper that she'd carefully folded up.

Me: What's this?
Em: It's your ticket.
Me: My ticket for what?
Em: Vesher.
Me: What?
Em: Vesher!
Me: Take that dummy out...
Em: Adventure.
Me: An adventure like with pirates?
Em: Yes we sailed on ship to island and there was a hole and the wormmies got the hole from the wormmy store and they went wriggle, wriggle, wriggle, wriggle, wriggle, wriggle, wriggle, wriggle, wriggle, wriggle, wriggle, wriggle and got it out for us. *
Me: Breath my love, breath. Got what out for us.
Em: Treasure.
Me: I love this adventure.

The power came back on after 7 and and a half hours. I've got to say that that was pretty quick work and that I'm a little disappointed. As unpleasant as it was to sit around in a cold house it was also kinda fun. A nice, safe adventure to break up the routine. For us at any rate; tomorrow will show just how bad it was for everyone else.

Gender

2010-06-04T10:55:00.002+10:00

Okay, I can talk about other things really. No seriously I can, honest...er, well that said, I've got to get this off my chest:

Meccano has re-issued it's classic metal construction set. When I saw them for sale I bought two for Emlyn despite her being less than a year old. She's just under three now and we're going to wait a bit longer to break it out. I don't really care if she takes to it or not, but she's going to have the opportunity for that kind of constructive play.

Em is an intelligent, curious and energetic human being. You can almost see the potential radiating out from her, like some kind of Van der Graaf generated nimbus. I don't understand how anyone, male or female, could see that potential and want to limit it in any way. It makes me grit my teeth to think of it. Saying to your daughter "I love you." while shoehorning her into a narrowly defined gender role is the very height of destructive ignorance.

I can and will denounce, demean and fucking destroy if necessary, anyone who tries to limit my daughter because she's female.

Photo from http://www.flickr.com/photos/panta/

Happy Birthday...

2010-05-30T00:22:00.001+10:00

...to me.

I got woken up by the most beautiful and smart toddler in the whole wide world who gave me the new Gogol Bordello CD and help me unwrap it. An impromptu gypsy-punk pajama dance party ensued in the kitchen. With a start like that how could it not be the best birthday ever?

Fears

2010-05-15T22:48:00.005+10:00

If I could name them, my fears would fill whole books. Great dusty tomes smelling of sweaty hands and dry rot. I try not to think about them in quantitative terms lest I be overwhelmed by the shear weight of those volumes. Two years and ten months ago a new set of fears came into my life, almost identical to those old familiar ones. For every fear I have for myself, I have one for Emlyn. Even in those moments where the joy crushes my lungs until all I can do is laugh those fears sit waiting. This too is parenting.

My fears for myself once threatened to bury me. No single one was enough to do it, but the weight of them all together was almost too much. I can't think why I never gave up. Perhaps, deep down, I really am an optimist. Whatever, the why of it doesn't matter anymore.

My fears for Emlyn are fundamentally different. They cannot overwhelm me, because if they did, if I succumbed, Em would be damaged. This is not an irrational fear like so many I have, this is a simple fact. A fact borne out by the damage I got from my father succumbing to his demons.

I can't prevent some of the things I worry about from coming to pass. Em will get her heart broken, it is even healthy that she do so. One can learn so much from such things. But I will be there to wipe her tears and say, "This too shall pass." I will be there to hold her and say "I love you."

I will be there.

Fuck all my fears. They have less worth than the tiniest part of the most insignificant moment in my daughter's life. They're dusty words in dusty books, and even if I can't be rid of them entirely they shall never threaten me again.

This is what joy looks like:

Stan Rogers, The Beatles and Me

2010-04-04T20:58:00.004+10:00

Once upon a time this was a blog about my life in music. These days, not so much. Funny how having a child and owning a business takes up all the time I have. Funny too how such a tiny little person takes up so much of my thoughts. I'm not complaining mind you, for the most part life's pretty good.

The thing I haven't confessed to anyone is that I haven't even been listening to much music for the last couple of years, let alone making it. I don't like having music on in the background, I've never really understood the point of that. Either the music is interesting and deserves my attention or it isn't so why have it on at all? Em and I have impromptu dance parties once in a while but that's a different thing.

Another problem is I like to listen on headphones. Unfortunately I'm not kidding about tinnitus and I'm afraid that headphones make it worse, even when the volume's low.

At work I mostly listen to podcasts. The nice thing about them is that if I have to pause it because someone's come into the shop it doesn't really matter. Unlike music, non-poetic spoken word pieces don't suffer much when repeatedly interrupted.

All of this has resulted in a long hiatus that I've recently broken. Broken to good effect I must say. My ipod hasn't been updated since I left Canada. The songs on it are all old favorites worn thin my repeated plays. This hiatus has refreshed them to a remarkable degree. The song at the end of this post has always been one that really kicked me in my soft, squishy emotions. I listened to it today for the first time in what must be two years. I'm not ashamed to say that I got goosebumps and tears in my eyes. I'm not presenting it here because I feel anyone else will have the same reaction, but it's a damned fine song with a damned fine sentiment regardless.

As to making music, I've finally set up my digital recorder. In a fit of inspiration I wrote and recorded a couple of things. At first it was just a verse structure, pretty simple and straightforward with just bass and guitar. Claire said it sounded like the most optimistic thing I've ever written. There's no lyrics yet but I have an idea of what I want to say and what Claire heard in the music was spot on. But then I thought it needed some kind of slower intro/bridge bit. I took the elements of the riff and played around with it till I got something I liked. Only to find that the intro has become something that can, and probably should, stand on its own.

This happens to me every time I try and write a complete piece. I can write one thing that I really like but when I try and write something contrasting to go with it that bit ends up being something else that no longer fits. Then I end up where I am now, feeling just too tired to try and think up yet another part that'll probably end up not working either. Ah well, at least it's a start.

The other thing I've been thinking about is writing more about music. My latest idea is to go through the Beatles discography from the beginning. You see, I've never really listened to them. Sure I've heard the songs, it's almost impossible to grow up in urban North America without hearing them. But I've never listened to them in detail, nor have I read much about them. Just the occasional short article where the author asserts that they had some profound effect on youth/music/culture etc. Assertions that never seem to have any backing other than that author's opinion.

The Beatles are perfect for such a project. They have a limited output, only 12 or 13 albums depending on how you count Magical Mystery Tour. They're 1/2 dead and never reformed in any way. I won't have to deal with issues like deciding whether The Who minus Keith Moon was actually The Who or did Entwhistle's death mark their final demise. And they have that huge mythology surrounding them.

I wonder if they hold up as anything other than nostalgia. I wonder if they'll speak to someone like me, an adult who grew up in another era on an odd combination of punk and classical. I wonder if their music is still relevant in the 21st century, divorced from cultural movement that is was so much a part of. Ha, I think I might just have talked myself into this. We'll see.

In the meantime please enjoy Stan Rogers' "The Mary Ellen Carter" It's too bad the video has credits running over it. I preferred this one because the only other I could find didn't have footage of Stan singing.

Sam Harris: Science can answer moral questions | Video on TED.com

2010-03-25T23:07:00.000+11:00

Sam Harris: Science can answer moral questions | Video on TED.com

Not exactly the way I wanted to start blogging again but it'll have to do. Mind you(?) no one's listening anymore. :)

Lift Your Head

2010-03-22T21:50:00.007+11:00

We had guests over for dinner last night, nice folk and gracious too. They were quite understanding of the gong show that is meal time with a toddler. They also knew to beat a hasty retreat before the bedtime meltdown. Despite their social graces they did distract us from a few of our nightly routines.

It was already dark when I realized that the chooks* hadn't been shut away for the night. Its best to do it just on dusk because that's when the foxes come out looking for an easy meal. Em wanted to come with me. She snuggled in on my shoulder with both her pink blankets tucked up around her. She insisted on carrying the torch which made or progress a little slower as the notion that torches are for lighting your way hasn't really sunk in yet. She wished Bart, Barney and Beebee "Good night." and "Sleep well." each in their turn as I pushed the door shut, fastened the chain and blocked the bottom with its brick.

As we were walking back to the house she lifted her head and said "Look. Stars. Pretty." Indeed they were. There's nothing quite like a southern hemisphere night sky seen from outside a city. The crescent moon was up, it's light hiding much of the Milky Way, but there were still uncountable shimmering lights to be seen. We stopped just back of the bungalow where the house lights are hidden and looked to the sky.

I pointed out the moon peeking through the trees. Em insisted that it was a half moon even though it was more like a quarter. Ah well, fractions can come later. I also pointed out what I'm pretty sure was Mars. It was definitely a planet and was obviously red so Mars seemed the logical choice. It took a couple of minutes to explain where it was but once Em got it she was quite taken with how red it was.

We talked about that a while and I explained what planets were, at two and half she didn't get it. That's okay, it's never too soon to start practicing not talking down to your child. We stood and quietly looked at the stars for awhile too. Then she said softly: "That's my moon, my stars."

I had to think about that for a second. In the end I said "Yes Em, they are yours." Of course they're not, at least not in the sense she meant it. But that's a lesson for later.

The light of stars is ancient, it's been traveling for tens, hundreds and even thousands of years before it falls on our eyes. To look to the night sky is to look back in time, this fills me full of wonder and awe.

We know so much about our universe and yet we've barely left our planet. Quasars, pulsars, black holes: no one has ever been anywhere near any of these phenomenon but still we understand a great deal about them and are learning more all the time. Our ability to explore, study and learn the true nature of our ancient and huge universe despite the handicap of the immense distances involved makes me proud to be human.

Ancient and huge, those words don't do justice to the scope of our universe. It's 13.7 billion (billion!) years old. The edge of the observable universe is 46.5 billion light years away and a light year is 10 trillion kilometers. It contains approximately 70 sextillion (7 x 10^22) stars. I'm incapable of understanding just how large these numbers are. Every time I try and grasp them they just slip away and leave me feeling oh so tiny and humble, and yet they also fill me with a profound sense of peace.

With so much room, so many stars and planets and so much time for it to happen in, well, it seems all but inevitable that life would come into existence. That thought when it first occurred to me was profoundly liberating. I never again needed to wonder why I'm here: I just am. And that means I'm free to live my life, cherish my family and friends, and help make our unimaginably tiny little portion of the universe as safe and as joyful as it can be. It means there are no arbitrary cosmic rules that I need to fear breaking by doing so. It means I can be joyful, humble, proud, peaceful, loving, awe-struck and filled with wonder as needed, the universe is more than big enough to accommodate them all.

All of these things, in all of their immensity belong to all of humanity. But explaining that to Em can wait until she's old enough to reason for herself. For now it is enough for her to know that the pretty stars belong to her.

*Chickens. I'm getting to the point where some Aussie terms are becoming second nature to say. It still feels awkward when I write them though. I paused after writing 'chook' and wondered if I should change it to 'chicken'. One thing won't change though: tomato going to be a toe-MAY-toe until I die!

Photo by Larry Landolfi

Dancing in the Dark

2009-07-21T21:55:00.005+10:00

Our little girl just turned two years old. For the longest time the hierarchy was Baby (Supreme Ruler of the Universe), Mum (Center of Said Universe) and Dad (That Guy Who Hangs Around a Lot). This applied to all facets of our life as a family. If Mum was available then Dad really had to work to get any facetime with The Ruler. It's been getting much better of late, occasionally Em will even remember her Noblise Oblige and grant me the briefest of unsolicited cuddles. A boon for which I will cheerfully commit any number of diplomatic faux pas, up to and including "accidently" backing a ute into the leader of a G8 country. Seriously, you'd better hope Em doesn't take a dislike to you. I'm wrapped so far around her little finger that if she were to point at you as say "Daddy, kill." you'd be meat so fast your head would spin, literally. You can't imagine how much cleaning up that entails, so for sake of my soft pink hands, please be nice to my daughter.

Of course this attachment to Mummy isn't always a great thing and we're actively trying to get her to chill about being without the maternal security blanket. Bed time has been especially difficult. For the longest time Em would not go to sleep unless Mummy was there in the room with her. Months ago we started putting her to bed together. The idea being that she should get used to me being there at bed time to the point where I'll be able to put her down solo. A few days ago I managed it, not without some fussing and carrying on mind you. But she did go to sleep with just me present. Progress.

The next night we both ended up staying. We were late getting her to bed and she was fussy and insistent that Mummy be there. Claire perched on the end of the bed and I stood in the center of the dark room. Claire made her escape early and successfully but I stayed for a few minutes, just in case.

I stood still in the dark for several minutes, silent and a little uncomfortable. I found myself swaying gently, it seemed to help make the standing easier. So I closed my eyes and played a song in my head, dancing more in thought than in fact. As I did so I remembered times on the dancefloor those 20 or so years ago.

I remembered the time I twisted my ankle so badly during Love and Rockets' "Ying and Yang and the Flowerpot Man" that I couldn't stand on it. One of the staff asked, well, yelled over the music actually, if I needed ice. I said "Oh God, yes!" Off they went and a bad French farce ensued. One with repeated misunderstandings over just what had been asked for, ice or an ambulance?

I remembered the time at a Jerry, Jerry and the Sons of Rhythm Orchestra gig where someone came down on my foot just as I was going up. Spiral fracture out of that one. I did get two shots of Tequila for the price of one though. I'd hobbled to the bar and asked the bartender what he had for pain, then laced my boot up tight and dived back in. One of the best gigs I've ever been to and I was right not to miss a second of it.

Funny how most of those memories involve getting hurt. I am not by even stretchiest of imaginations what anyone would call a graceful person. I've scars on all of my extremities to stand in witness to this fact. I do however dance reasonably well. Or I do when I'm given my head and room to move. I suck at anything that requires knowledge and coordination with anyone else. My method was to shut my eyes, always circle counter clockwise and always have at least one part of my body moving with the beat. Well, to be really honest I did dance reasonably well back when I danced at all.

There in Em's room I also remembered the time that the almost supernaturally beautiful East Indian girl told me: "You dance pretty good for a white guy." I was taken aback, first that she'd even spoken to me and second that what she'd said was something resembling a compliment. Of course at that time my self esteem was measured in parts per million. I muttered "Thanks", shut my eyes and sank back into the beat. At the next break between songs she leaned over and said: "You look like Jesus." Now that?...that really rattled me. Okay, I did look like Jesus at the time, or at least the Western world's myth of Jesus as a long haired, bearded white guy. Although I'm pretty sure there isn't too many official portraits of Jesus wearing combat boots and torn black jeans.

I had no idea what to make of this comment.* Was she coming on to me? It didn't seem likely. I mean Jesus isn't exactly know for his sex appeal. Nor for his suitability as a life partner come to that. I danced out the next song and slipped away before another could start. I suspect that I ended up convincing myself that the whole thing was some sort of veiled insult. But I'm not sure, the rest of the evening is blurry from deliberately applied self medication of the malted sort. Hmm, perhaps my self esteem at that time was measured in parts per billion.

So there I was, two decades and half a world away from that silly young man, standing in the dark, swaying in place, remembering, wondering: what had changed, am I the same person?

Once upon a time I danced in a crowded room with my eyes closed because I hadn't yet learned that I was worthy of love. Today I sway in the dark for an audience of one: a bundle of strong-willed toddler proof of how so very wrong I was for such a very long time. One who's image stands next to every definition I have for love. One whose eyes had better be closed.

"Lie down sweetie, it's okay, Daddy's here. Thatsa girl, now close your eyes my love, it's time to sleep..."

*That Jesus comment still puzzles me. I wish I could go back and ask her what she meant. Any ideas?

Who We Are

2009-07-10T21:44:00.003+10:00

It all seemed so important and then, much later, it all seemed so trivial. We stopped judging people by such a narrow criteria. We met people that liked Emerson, Lake and Palmer, or The Eagles, or god forbid, Vanilla Ice and we didn't despise them, some even became friends.

But it was important, it was vital, just not in the way that we thought it was. We learned something, many things.

We learned that we weren't alone. For the first time, we chose to be a part of something that was wholly our own. We paid the price of membership, the clothes, the hair, the attitude, the uniform. We learned the strength of numbers, but also that a uniform exterior doesn't mean a uniform interior. We learned that it's possible to choose the symbols of our allegiance and through that we learned to be independent again.

We learned limits. Some of us chose to go down, the whole way down as we watched in awe and horror. Some made it back stronger, some made it back damaged and some didn't make it back at all. It was hard learning that we can't save everybody no matter how much we have in common.

We learned the most important lesson of all. Is it any wonder that the first great love of our life came with a soundtrack? We threw our passions at the sounds coming from a needle scratching plastic and at the figures who made those sounds, both right in front of us in the smokey air and impossibly, electronically far away. On the dance floor we rehearsed setting free the exaltation and energy bottled up inside. Sometimes we ended up bloody and bruised, but that too was practice. We let it all out and to our wonder we saw it reflected back at us from the sweating mass. We learned that if all those people could feel the same way about the music, then that cherished, longed-for individual sitting right there, so near, could be feeling those same longings for us. And just perhaps, it might be safe to set those feelings free. We learned how to love.

So yes, it was important, not the details but the experience and all it taught us. Nurture those memories, follow Memory Lane all the way to Nostagia, those experiences made us who we are.

*I must confess: I wrote this back in February as a Note on Facebook. By coincidence it was the same day Lux Interior from the Cramps died. Not sure why I never posted it here, but I'm feeling all nostalgicy again so here it is.

Dennis

2009-05-25T20:54:00.008+10:00

I have one really long hair in my right eyebrow. I mean really long, freaky long, maybe six time the length of my regular eyebrow hairs. His name is Dennis. I've been aware of him for a decade now in that vague masculine way: "Huh, lookit that. Cool." After his discovery I never thought about him save when he sat up to take a look around and I had to coax him back into the bushy fold. Live and let live was my strategy.

My wife and I had been together for a number of years before she notice Dennis. Her reaction was more like someone discovering proof that the Prime Minister is actually a robot. Shock, disbelief and an unholy glee that wouldn't let her leave well enough alone. She badgered me mercilessly. Badgered? Hell, she downright bobcatted me.

"Let me pluck it."

"No."

"Come on....it won't hurt."

"As if. No."

"I'll do [insert dirty act of your choice] if you let me."

"Ha. You'd do that anyway, it's in our marriage contract. No."

"If you love me you'd let me."

"Hmmmm, let me think about that......NO!"

She's a persistent woman that wife o' mine, but then, I'm pretty stubborn too. I fended her off for weeks. Finally she gave up asking and simply rolled over, grabbed Dennis by his head and yanked him out. "There, isn't that better?" "Fuck no! And may I say: OW!" Having accomplished the deed that had been upsetting the balance of the the universe by remaining undone she rolled back and slept the sleep of the righteous. I grumbled and rubbed my throbbing eyebrow and plotted folliclular revenge, knowing full well that I didn't have the guts to carry out any of my schemes.

Dennis grew back as hairs are wont to do. Maybe not as proud and thick but just as long. I've been hiding him from my plucky wife like a drunkard living in a Temperance Hall would his bottle.

You see, Dennis is a part of me. A tiny part to be sure, perhaps even the most insignificant part, but he's unique and he's mine. One day soon enough I'll be gone. My child will remember me and perhaps my grand children will too, if I'm lucky enough to have them. But that'd be about it. The memory of me, of all the things that made me unique, will eventually fade from this earth and it'll be as if I never existed. I'll be damned if I'll let Dennis be repeatedly plucked until he grows no more. I'll not let him or anything else that makes me unique fade one second before it has to. I'll fight entropy, yes, and time itself if I must because there ain't no afterlife. Not for the likes of me and Dennis.

I'm perfectly comfortable with this quixotic battle.

Just don't tell my wife, okay? Thanks.

B&W

2008-10-21T21:03:00.002+11:00

Black and white photographs, there's a certainty to them that freezes me. Even in those famous ones where a moment of pain, doubt or confusion is captured, accidently nailed down for all of us who follow, the faces seem to know more than I do.

Maybe colour is too messy. My first day at the shop*, I crashed my bike on the way there. Tore up my knee pretty badly. I spent my first hours as a small business owner with blood dripping on my boot, eventually I had to turn my sock inside out because it had become crusty with dried blood. The colour of it was vivid, shocking, I would look down and not know what to do, not believing it was real. I can picture the same wound on a solider from the Second World War, published in some high school text, grainy and grey. He might be grimacing or making light of it, the fear of his situation might be clear in his eyes but those old photos never seem to show people unsure of their reality.

I wake at night and wonder what the hell I've gotten myself into and don't fall back asleep. I work 10 and 12 hours a day but none of it seems real. Any yet I'm not petrified, not like I thought I'd be.

My daughter now remembers me even though we only have an hour or so together before she goes to bed at night. She can't possibly see how confused I am; she seems to know that everything will be alright. Could it be that I'm so old to her that she sees me in black and white, all the mess and existential angst leached away? Am I just surface and certainty to her the way old faces in monochrome are to me? Perhaps.

But then it doesn't really matter does it? Despite everything I will still tickle her feet until she screams with toddler laughter. I will still crumble when she puts her head down next to mine and clutches me tight. I will lock my uncertainty of everything inside my skull. In technicolour, in greyscale, in hand-bloody-tinted daguerreotype even if that's what it takes: I will be as real as she needs me to be.

*We've purchased a bike store in a small town in Australia.

Us and Them

2008-07-26T15:16:00.005+10:00

I bear witness. It's not my job, I'm there to fix bicycles, and it's not my choice. Somehow the community has decided that that's my role. I'm comfortable with this, I've played the interested outsider often enough in the past.

They tell me the details, mundane and fantastic. Non-sequiturs abound and stream of consciousness rants are less art and more necessity. They go out of their way to keep me informed. He came back a week later to tell me his bike was still fine and that "It was all lies and bull-shit." His girlfriend, then only 3 days into their relationship, hadn't slept with anyone else.

He laid out one of the rules: advice isn't wanted. On first hearing that "I haven't slept since Monday, if this keeps on I'm going to go back to my bad old ways and end up dead or in jail." I suggested that a 3 day relationship wasn't worth this kind of angst. His silence as I said this was exactly the same as the one when the 3 Harley's roared by, proudly mufflerless and deafening. He politely waited till the noise stopped and continued on with his thought.

Questions are ok, sometimes. When I asked another client, as I tried for the fifth time to make incompatible parts play nice together, if panhandling was hard work he laughed. It was the only sincere laugh I heard that day, and said "I'm totally lazy, I just sit there."

"Yah, sure." I said, "But don't you get lots of abuse."

"Well, I sit with my head down like this."

He hunched over and put his hands up over his face, covering his eyes. I've seen people begging like this before, perhaps even him. Huddled in a posture of abject misery, feigned or real, it always seemed like a silent plea. But it also is an insulation, a defense. If you can't see the person verbally treating you like you're sub-human you can pretend their not there. If they can't see you react, you win. A paltry victory perhaps, but the only one that that situation affords.

So I'm learning. I'm learning what the people who have the least in our society do to get by. I'm also learning how they treat each other. Anger is common. No surprise. But so is affection, sometimes fierce, sometimes tender. I never noticed this before because it's mostly quiet, unlike the anger which can often be heard blocks away. Really, it shouldn't surprise, the only people these folks really have is each other.

I'm learning. Generosity is as common here as it is anywhere. On my first day they we're serving pastries donated by a local bakery. They looked fantastic. A guy who'd been watching me work suggested that I should snag one. I demurred, saying that I'd wait till the end. He looked up at me smiled without guile or irony and said "You know, it's ok to have a home." I was so taken aback by his kindness that I'm not sure if I thanked him. I did have a slice of cake though. It was fantastic.

My second day I was outside. Everyone was lining up for food bank handouts. At the end of the day I found a packet of apple chips in my helmet, deposited when I wasn't watching. They could have just as easily made off with my lid and gloves.

I'm learning. These people are often damaged: drugs, injury, genetics, you name it. They're rough around the edges and sometime right through the middle. Their humour isn't subtle or sophisticated. Their anger in barely restrained and often self directed. And yet...and yet they still can laugh. They still forgive. They still love. They look on their children with wonder and joy. They rally around the ones who are hurting the most and search for those gone missing.

I'm learning the most important secret of all.

Come closer and I'll whisper it to you, don't be afraid, it won't be a surprise:

They aren't really "they" at all.

The State O'Things

2008-03-23T16:27:00.008+11:00

Well, thanks to Fritz I've got a lot more traffic here than I usually do. Thank you sir, you're a gentleman and a scholar. I don't feel like I'm back as such, but I certainly haven't been posting for the last little while. Being a new father will do that. Mind you, I've never been particularly consistent about posting.

I'm a little at sea about what to do about this blog. It started as a motivational tool to keep me practicing guitar and soon developed into an exploration of just why I spent so much time playing music when I never got paid, recorded or even played more than two gigs a year. I found an answer to that question and my motivation to write ebbed, as did my desire to play.

I can't really call myself a musician anymore. The band has folded and even if it hadn't I'm on the other side of the world. I don't practice as such, my only playing is strumming for my daughter, singing her #1 favourite: "Yummy Yellow Strap". Our routine is for me to play some simple changes she can shriek along with. Then I tune the guitar to a chord and she has a bash until the yellow strap on the guitar become more interesting, and tasty apparently, than the music. I then sing a couple of rounds of YYS and we move onto something equally fascinating, like chewing on junkmail or bashing empty boxes.

So what do I write about? I'm reluctant to become a daddy blog although that's a subject I have very strong feelings about. I'm not likely to become a cycling blog although that's a passion of mine for the last 20 years. I've never really felt the need to be exclusive in content, to the detriment of my hit count. I guess I'll just carry on as I have been, writing about the things that move me and things that I need to figure out.

In honour of Fritz's kind link here's the state of my cycling life.

I mentioned my dilemma about what I'm going to do for work in this dry, dry land. Since I wrote that post we went to the Victorian government department of small business. They were very encouraging about starting a cycling business. I got a bunch of handouts and have started reading them with an eye to compiling a list of questions for a professional to answer about owning and operating a small business. It's been pretty straightforward so far.

I'm uncharacteristically optimistic about this endeavour. During the day I'd have to describe my mood about it as positively cheery. At 3 in the morning whilst cradling a screaming Em, pacing the hall in a soothing march my doubts gnaw away, digesting all that yummy positivism. "What if I can't get financing?" "What if I get financing and can't make a go of it?" "Will I have to flee back to Canada or will I end up in debtor's prison?" "Will getting the LUC to smuggle me dope and cigarettes keep me from becoming some hairless felon's special friend?" "Will I ever get a decent night's sleep?" and so on.

I've also been wondering if my optimism is coming from somewhere else. You see, the light here is different. It's somehow cleaner, purer, like it's fallen straight from heaven unsullied by common air. I'm not the only one to notice this; I first read about it in Bill Bryson's book "In a Sunburnt Country." Mind you I didn't give it much credence, Bryson's book is as much a love letter to Australia as it is a travelogue, and those in love aren't the best of witnesses. Is this light illuminating things as really are, a celestial arc-lamp of truth? Can it be as easy as making the decision and putting in the work? Or am I being fooled, being sun-addled into risking money that I don't have, risking my daughter's future?

Ah well, self-doubt is a comforter I've had since my bike had 3 wheels and no brakes. Nevermind that it's ragged, faded and in bad need of washing. It's mine, and I won't be parted from it without throwing myself down and screaming until I turn blue.

As to actual cycling, I haven't done much since last September. Let's not talk about how large my waist has become. We brought our Brompton folders but the nearest town is 20k away, not too far to ride but too far to tote a 7 month old baby to. Everytime we go to Melbourne if find myself oggling the cyclists passing by to the point were I feel just a little dirty about it. I've taken to wearing sunglasses all the time and hoping that people assume I'm perving on all the pretty young things walking around. Speaking of which, unless something has changed drastically at home the girls here wear a lot less clothes than I'm used to. I'm terrified of Emlyn's teenage years, terrified.

Now, just in case I actually go through with this mad idea to start my own store I have some questions for you my gentle readers.

What was the worst experience you've had at a local bike store and what's the best?

I have my own ideas about what cycling retailers do right and wrong but a sample of one is pretty paltry.

Thanks.

Australia

2008-03-15T18:19:00.006+11:00

Coming from Canada to Auz isn't the transition it might be from other parts of the world. We're both big nations with lots of nearly uninhabitable land. We're both ex-British colonies with all the Queen still on the money and our beers are better than the American's. I've found it different enough here to be interesting and the same enough to be comfortable, a rather pleasant situation indeed.

I'm at a point in my life were I have to make some decisions. I spent the last 20 or so years managing a used book store. It was a dead end job but I was good at it and I enjoyed it a lot of the time. But when I told my boss that I was going to take a year off with the LUC to be there in the first year of little Em's life it was obvious he was glad I was going. And that as they say, was that.

I spent that summer being the full-time mechanic for the Edmonton Bike Commuters helping people fix their bikes. It was great. I loved working with my hands and teaching people, empowering them even. It was immensely satisfying. I would be happy doing that for at least a few years but of course moving to Australia is going to make that impossible. Besides, the LUC's earning potential as an engineer is much greater than mine so it looks like I'm going to be playing Mr. Mum for the next few years. I'm more ok with that now that I've met our daughter than I was previously. I've called myself a feminist in the past and agreed that raising a child is a job of equal or greater worth as any other. Now it's time to put up or shut up.

I have a notion for fixing up old bikes between nappy changes and selling them to make a little cash. I took the repair course from Barnett's Bicycle Institute last fall so I'm pretty confident about my repair skills. I've also got some ideas that would make these bikes more enticing to people than old bikes usually are. We'll have to see. It'll be a while before Em's independent enough to allow me much time to work.

The LUC and I have talked about setting up an alternative transport consulting business. She's a transportation engineer specializing in bikes, peds and whatnot. As much as I enjoyed teaching I'm not sure I bring enough to that party to be useful.

We've also talked about opening a bike store. One that specializes in commuter and lifestyle cycling. Really, it's the obvious thing to do with my experience in retail. I'm hot and cold on this idea. Small retail is a stressful way to earn a living and I've never met a bike store owner that I'd call happy. Mind you, I've only met them in their store with me in the role of customer, not exactly a situation that promotes easy confidences.

We return to Canada in June either to pick up where we left off or to pack up and move to Auz. It's looking 95% likely that we'll move. I'm really hoping to see my future clearly before then. Right now it's all a jumbled blur, the possibilities overlap and shift and I'm not at my best with these sorts of choices. I suffer from the delusion that there's a right choice, and only one right choice. All the others are traps loaded with poisonous spiders and rabid dingos. Much as I'd like to just close my eyes and leap I'm going to agonize and fret until fatigued and dehydrated I fall into the next phase of my working life.

Wedding II: The Sequel. "This Time it's Personal"

2008-02-29T16:37:00.001+11:00

In a bid to show that it's not all angsty soul-searching 'round these parts I'm going to point out that not only am I getting married again today, but I'm hours from a second wedding night too.

Forgiving

2008-02-03T23:30:00.000+11:00

She has my father's eyes.

She's only 6 months old so there's still the possibility that they'll change to a shade of green like mine or her mother's.

Until now the only things that I've had to remind me of my father are his watch and a profound distrust of alcohol. Now every time I look into my daughter's eyes I see him. I see him and I'm reminded of the time he stood in the door of my bedroom and stated that I didn't love him. What could I, all of 9 years old, say to that? I'm reminded of how I dreaded weekends and holidays. I'm reminded of all the times I crept out of my bedroom as he snored his drunken snore on the couch, crawling on hands and knees behind the planter to turn on the porch light. It shone in my bedroom window and made my room feel safe. Those few meters made my heart race, sweating and praying that he wouldn't wake up. Praying too that he wouldn't get up and turn it off after I made it back to bed so I'd have to do it all over again: Sisyphus in flannel pajamas. I don't want to be reminded of any of this.

And yet...and yet I don't really want Emlyn's eyes to change. Somehow I think he would be proud of his granddaughter. Maybe it's just the blinders of new-parenthood that makes me feel this way but I can't imagine my father not loving her. I see him picking her up and tossing her in the way that makes her laugh her little baby laugh and he's smitten just like I am. He looks in her eyes and sees the best of himself looking back.

I want her eyes to stay that particular shade of blue-gray; I want my love for her to spill over into my memories of him. It's the least I can do. Because without my father she wouldn't exist, and for that I can forgive him everything.

Lies

2008-01-07T10:47:00.000+11:00

It’s the stories we tell ourselves, as much as anything, that define who we are. My story involves a lot of pain and very few happy endings. I’ve just realized that I’m going to lie to my daughter. Lie and lie and lie again, for the whole of my life. She will not grow up inside my story. Her’s will be one in which all things are possible and defeat will not ever be permanent.

My father’s story involved the curative powers of alcohol, and in a way it was a cure. It killed him. I edited the alcohol out of my tale but he bequeathed me the pain that made him drink. I would give Emlyn anything and everything that I have, but she inherits none of that. This is my new story and I will repeat it in the night before sleep, in the light of each new morning, beside fires in the wilderness and sitting at the kitchen table. That which I say three times might not be true, but that which I say now and always, will be.

A Fear-Full Man

2008-01-04T16:39:00.000+11:00

Claire and Em are back at the house, hopefully napping soundly. I feel a pull from them that's hard to explain. How is it that you can spend half a lifetime trying to separate yourself from the world, to make yourself safe? Then you find yourself sitting in a food-court, separated from those you love by less than a kilometer, less than an hour, and you're all but weeping because they aren't near enough.

How does this happen, this unasked-for connection to the world? Did I carelessly leave the key where it could be found, or has time and age undercut all my carefully plumbed and trued defenses? And if so, what else is out there waiting to tiptoe in through that heart shaped hole?

It's getting full in here, I'll have to make some room.

Introducing Emlyn

2007-10-17T21:59:00.000+10:00

Born July 28, 6 pound 7 onces and a full head of hair.

When last we left our intrepid blogger he was waiting for his wife to start having real contractions. Waiting in a wilderness of anticipation and anxiety. Unfortunately my anxiety turned out to be warranted. The baby was breach and Claire's waters broke long before she started having contractions. There was no way to turn the baby and the hospital wouldn't even consider trying to deliver breach. We ended up having to have a Caesarean delivery. And for the record, I will hunt down and put the boots to anyone who citizens that decision. It was hard enough to go through without being second guessed.

It was 20 minutes from the time they took Claire into the operating room until they let me come in. Those were some pretty long minutes. I've never consciously tried so hard to not think as I did at that time. I counted the holes on the edge of the mask I'd been given. I wondered how many fathers-to-be had sat in that seat and took a picture of the sign that said "No photography." I did everything I could to not let what was about to happen enter my mind. They were about to cut open the first person in the world for which I'd gladly sacrifice myself to stop such a thing from happening. Cut her open in order to retrieve the second person for which I felt that way.

No matter how hard it was for me, it was harder still for Claire.

Enough about that. In the end the method her birth is one tiny detail compared to the rest of her life. One she won't even remember.

As you can see, she's pretty much the most beautiful baby ever. What? You think I'm biased? Well, 5 out of her 6 grandparents agree and you can't get a more significant sample than that.

Learning how to be a father has been a challenge. My previous experience with children consisted primarily of avoidance. But I'm getting the hang of diapers and the lack of sleep.

There's been so much that's happened since last I wrote, it's hard to find a place to start.

The summer job helping people fix their bikes was the best job I've ever had. It was almost a daily occurrence where someone would thank me sincerely for my help; such is the nature of empowering people.

Right now we're in Sydney Australia. We spent almost a month in Colorado Springs in the USA while I attended Barnett's Bicycle Institute. It was a great experience, I learned a great deal including just how little I actually knew. Unfortunately I got sick in the last few days of the course, a minor cold with a sore throat. After we were done in Colorado we went to Sechelt BC (just up the coast from Vancouver) to introduce the little one to her Canadian Grandma. It was nice to be there but I spent the whole time being miserable with the cold.

We had a bunch of fun with my Australian visa and my passport. I had to send it off to Ottawa in order to get the visa. Twice. It literally came within 10 minutes of not being returned in time. The one-day service courier we'd chosen to get it back to us in Sechelt actually takes two days to get there because of the ferry connection. I called the Australian High Commission 10 minutes before it's scheduled courier pick up and changed the service. We stopped on the way to the airport in Vancouver to pick up my passport. We also stopped so I could go to the doctor. My cold had turned into a lung infection. The doctor took a look at me and said "You're not doing anything this weekend, right." It wasn't a question. I had to admit that I was actually getting on a 16-hour flight as soon as I was done there. The doctor paused, sighed and reached for his prescription pad.

But now we're in Sydney and I can sit on our balcony looking out over a banana tree and scary the parrots with my hacking cough. Ya, life's not so bad. We're here for a couple of more days then off for a drive to Wilby (good luck finding that on a map of Australia) to stay with the mother-in-law.

So much for the reportage, hopefully soon I'll have the time and energy to think about what any of all this means.

2007-07-28T03:15:00.000+10:00

So we got married almost 2 weeks ago. Best wedding I've ever been to. Last night a 5am Claire's waters broke. We went to the hospital and they've sent us home until the real contractions start. I am not ready for this. Think good things for us. When next we speak there'll be a shiny new person in the world.

Time doesn't just fly, it rockets

2007-07-04T14:54:00.000+10:00

So here it is, the last deep breath before the craziness. I'm sitting here alone waiting for the LUC to pick up our first Aussie wedding guest from the airport. From now till the baby's born we'll have at least one house guest staying here. It's been busy, so very busy despite quiting my full time job and taking one running a bike co-op's repair shop for 6 hours a day. I was leaving the bookstore anyway and playing with bikes for a summer sounded great. This is literally the end of my already skimpy free time.

We're just 11 days from the wedding and around 29 to the due date and 75 days from packing up the house and going to Colorado Springs for 3 weeks. I'm going to attend Barnett's school for bike mechanics there and then we're off to Australia for 8 months to stay with the new grandparents. Just looking at that last sentence makes me tired.

Anyway, I can't imagine I have any regular readers left, but if I do here's a little bone:

www.steveandclaire.net

I've made a point to be anonymous but really that's just an affectation these days. I'm self-censoring to the point that I'm not going to offend anyone in my daily life anymore. My mother reads this after all.

I'm not giving up on blogging yet. I do find great satisfaction in the whole thing, when I have the time that is. I'm sure I'm going to have plenty to say about the wedding and the birth of our child so I'll be back. Hopefully soon. Wish us well.

Oh, and to answer the most common question we get: no we don't know the sex. Really, we're hoping mostly for a human. You see, there's these three hours that the LUC is missing and all her credit cards have been demagnetized....so we're keeping our fingers crossed.

Acceptable

2007-05-08T14:56:00.000+10:00

"....death. Mine, the LUC's and even our unnamed babe's and that is more than OK, it's perfect."

Hmmph. A pretty bold statement that. The kind of statement that's just begging for a reality suplex followed by an atomic elbow. Oh yes indeed, a great, crushing backhand to the head was dealt to me last Thursday.

There were two messages on the machine when I got home late from rehearsal. On the first my brother was audibly tense and terse, "Call me as soon as you get this." On the second he explained: my mother had fallen down that morning and broken her hip. They were going to have to do surgery.

She lives in Sechelt on the coast of British Columbia. It's an hour and a half flight to Vancouver from here, followed by a couple of hours of bus and ferry to get to her place. They'd moved her by ambulance to the Lion's Gate Hospital in North Vancouver so all I had to do was get to Vancouver.

Initially I wasn't going to go but I thought better of it. After all, I can get more money but I have only one mother. There's always a risk with surgery, sometimes people don't make it even during minor procedures. My mother's 77 and that makes it all the more risky. I really wanted to be there before they started cutting. Have I mention I'm a worrier? Yes indeedy I am.

I haven't been the best of son's. Sure, I rarely borrow money and she's never had to bail me out of jail but I've been geographically and emotionally distant. There are things I needed to say to her before the end.

I booked the 6am flight and after 2 hours sleep got a cab to the airport. The cab driver was chatty, really chatty. Who the hell wants to make small talk at 4am? From the Vancouver airport I cabbed to the Seabus and was at the hospital before 9. Take a moment to think about that. I crossed the Rockies to get there. It was maybe 5 hours total travel time, door to bedside. Can there be any doubt that we're living in a golden age? Well, a golden age of travel at least.

I stayed at the hospital until they took her into surgery, with just a short break for lunch . It was hard. She was in a lot of pain and the morphine was kicking her ass pretty badly. She was nauseous, itchy and mildly disoriented until they gave her Gravol which put her even more out of it. And thirsty. She wasn't allowed to eat or drink anything. All I could do was wet a sponge on a stick so she could wipe her gums and lips. Very hard that.

I didn't really get to say anything I needed to in those few hard hours. She was in better spirits than I as they wheeled her into the elevator to the operating room. I was trying not to cry.

There was no point in waiting at the hospital. I gathered my pack, map and hat and hiked to my brother's place. It was around a 45 minute walk and the weather was, well, appropriate for my mood. It rained hard, the clouds didn't even surrender a glimpse of the mountains let alone the sky. There was a moment where I stood, map in hand, the rain pattering against it unnoticed as I cried. I most definitely didn't feel like the possibility of my Mother's death was "perfect".

She came through the surgery fine. Apparently if you have to break a hip the way she did it is the way to go. The next day she was off the morphine and much more comfortable. They even got her on her feet for a few steps. Ah the power of a few titanium pins and deft hand with a scalpel. Sure western medicine has it's problems but there's nothing better for fixing broken bones.

We talked. Just a conversation glancing across the regrets I have as a son and she has as a mother. It was enough. You see, I'm just as comfortable with the fact my Mother is going to die* as I am with the mortality of everyone in my life. Or at least I am on a sunny day with more than 3 hours of sleep under my belt. What's not acceptable is any of those people going to the grave without knowing that I love them.

*Not anytime soon Mum! You have another grandchild to meet.

Orbital Mechanics

2007-04-24T14:08:00.000+10:00

Last night I stayed up way too late. I'm claiming that it's training for when the baby comes, a claim I'll make under oath if necessary. I made the mistake of downloading Bach's Art of the Fugue just before going to bed. I've wanted this piece, pieces really, for a while now. I have a small book of the sheet music for it that I've been looking at for almost a year and it was time to see if it sounded like I imagined it did.

I ended up staying up until 3am listening as I read along. These pieces are scored with four separate melody parts but there's debate as to what instruments should play each part, Bach never said apparently. I bought one of the more common arrangements for string quartet. I found that reading one of the inner voices as it played, either the second violin or the viola, gave me a whole new way of hearing this kind of music.

Contrapuntal music is pretty busy stuff by and large, and fugues can be very complicated indeed. When three or four melodies are playing at once I find that my ear bounces from one instrument to the next depending on how prominent it is in the mix and how active the part is. By listening to just one of the inner voices I found myself being able to hear the piece as whole. The bass and 1st violin parts being the lowest and highest stand out naturally so this makes sense.

I could hear, at least most of the time, all three of these parts at once, as separate melodies even while they were being played at the same time. This is something I've been trying to do since I read in music school that it was probable that people in medieval times heard music this way. Some scholars think that they didn't hear the harmony, the way notes sound when played at the same time, as dominantly as we do today. Or at least it wasn't important to them. Bach the senior's contrapuntal music is the most sophisticated expression of this even though he used the harmony rules that we still use today.

It was one of those moments when suddenly something that had been difficult became easy. I've been having a lot of those moments lately.

It's not much of a secret that I never really wanted children. I tried a number of arguments with the LUC: financial, environmental and so on to discourage the idea. None of it flew. Possibly because the real reason I didn't want to father a child wasn't really any of these. No, the real reason was that the very idea scared the living crap out of me. I'm a worrier who possesses an active imagination that was only too happy to provided me with no end of parental disasters.

That changed with Owen's death and the LUC's pregnancy. You'd think that such a tragedy at such a time would make me worse. After all, there's nothing like seeing fears come true to encourage the chronically pessimistic. But as I said before, even a short life well lived is worth it. This is one of those points were I wish I was a great writer. I wish I could craft a phrase that conveyed just how a profound a change this is for me. A simple phrase that would leave you the reader feeling as at peace as I do with the fact that my child will someday die. Ah well, there's nothing to do but blither away.

My father died when I was in my early teens. I was the one who recognized that Dad wasn't asleep on the couch, that he wasn't breathing. Death is not an abstract thing to me. It was a very real terror for many, many years. The nihilism of the of the 80's punk culture found fertile ground in me, despite never completely buying into all the rules and uniforms that went along with it. A "What's the point? We're all going to die no matter what we do." attitude informed most of my actions.

It ran deep enough that when the Soviet Union collapsed and it became clear that a nuclear war wasn't likely to happen in my lifetime, well, I was pissed off. Pissed off enough to write a song about it. "I thought they'd burn us all with a piece of the sun, now I know it'll happen one by one. I miss the end of the world." was how the chorus went. I meant it. I was comforted by the thought that when I went out, everyone else would be coming with me.

As life went on (And on, and on, and on. Honestly. How the hell did become 40?) I began to get a handle on my depression. Well, mostly anyway, I still lose the occasional battle for all that I seem to be winning the war. For the most part my nihilism faded into the background, not gone entirely, but not informing so much of my world view as it once did.

That was pretty much the state of things for the last few years.

[Hmmm, reading over this I realize I haven't strained a metaphor yet. We can't have that. I mean, if they don't get strained they're going to go all flabby and there's nothing worse than a pudgy metaphor.]

The arc my life made through the heavens had been changing every so slowly over the years. It had been curving its solitary path away from the dark empty and towards... well, what exactly I couldn't see. I met the LUC and the arc doubled and tightened, the destination was still unclear but the velocity increased. Suddenly out of nowhere came the twin planets of Owen's death and the LUC's pregnancy. These two massive bodies with gravity inexorable have grabbed and flung me on a new course. For the first time in my life I can see where I'm going. Fatherhood. Family. Life. Life, wow, life. It's there, stretching ahead of me, all the way to death. Mine, the LUC's and even our unnamed babe's and that is more than OK, it's perfect. You see, that end is just one tiny point on the journey. Of course you see, the thing that's filling me with wonder to point of bursting is that now I see it too.

Easter thought

2007-04-11T00:11:00.000+10:00

I told the LUC this weekend that she is flatly forbidden* to give birth to any sort of messiah. Even a cycling one. I mean, the perks of being the father of the saviour would be awesome, think of all the free wine, but it didn't turn out so well there at the end. Not for the kid anyway.

No, I'll settle for a healthy human child, thank you very much.

I felt the baby kick for the first time last week. It was cool and creepy in equal parts. I can only imagine how it feels to be the one being booted in the kidneys. And really, I'm OK with that. No Venus envy here. :)

*OK, I know were not technically married yet so it's a little soon to start issuing spousal orders. Despite that, I've been compiling a list of things she's forbidden to do since we first met.

They include:

-Getting hijacked by terrorists

-Getting eaten by sharks

-Getting abducted by grey aliens

-Getting involved in multi-level marketing

-Jumping off of anything with a malfunctioning parachute/bungee cord or vehicle, motored or otherwise

-Being bitten by any kind of radioactive fauna and developing superpowers (this is more of a preference than an outright ban)

-Giving birth to a messiah

I've also told her that if she dies giving birth I'm going to name the baby Skrotor, regardless of gender. The babe and I will then go on a cross country crime spree in the largest SUV we can steal. The crimes against property, humanity and the environment won't end until we're taken down in a hail of righteous police bullets or until Skrotor becomes old enough to be tried as adult.

Mmmmmm!

2007-04-04T13:48:00.000+10:00

I look at what I've written here over the years and I'm not sure I like the portrait it paints of me. For the most part it's pretty humourless stuff. This might be because I use this space to sort out the negative things in my life or it might be because I really don't know how to write humour. Be that as it may here's something that made me laugh this morning. Laugh in that deep and satisfying way were you feel the weight of, well, everything slide off your shoulders.

The LUC brought me some cake yesterday. It was a lovely surprise and I'd planned to take it home and share it with her after work. I forgot it. I called work and asked them to find it and put it in the fridge for me.

This morning I came in and found this next to the "Help Us Find Our Missing Father" poster that we put up for someone last week.

Click on it for a larger image.

Sometimes I really love my employees.

The cost

2007-03-25T14:34:00.000+10:00

The room's crowded, uncomfortably so. It's hot and late, people are obviously starting to fade and it won't be long before things break up. It falls quiet, just one of those moments where everyone comes to rest at the same time, their punctuations aligning for a moment.

I fill the silence and the sound of eye rolling is the reply. Someone mutters "whiner" under their breath. Not unexpected, not by now, and though it gives me pause I still finish my thought.

You see, I had to say something. I was having trouble breathing. The elephant in the room, my elephant, was taking up so much space that the air was being compressed, heavy in my lungs. It's one of a herd that I can't seem to shake, not for long anyway.

Fortunately those elephants of mine have very large ears and are shy by nature. They can't stand to be spoken of and flee at the sound of their names. A temporary respite, but I'll take what I can get. And if the price I have to pay for a moment of peace is contempt from strangers and strained sympathy from friends, then so be it.

I'll pay, and pay again gladly, even if the government figures a way to tax such a purchase, even if no one else ever manages to glimpse the fleeing pachyderm.

Wonderfully banal

2007-03-02T02:32:00.000+11:00

So, do you want to see a picture of my kid?

How that question gets answered is pretty revealing. It seems to polarize people into those who are eager and those who are grudging. Mind you no one ever refuses outright. I guess new parents are perceived to be a bit touchy. Go figure.

I can understand this. Kids embody one of the basic dichotomies of human existence. On the one hand they are utterly miraculous and on the other there's nothing more banal. The ability to create new life, a whole new person with unique thoughts and emotions is astounding. I have trouble wrapping my head around the idea and I'm having even more trouble trying to articulate the wonder of it.

It seems to me that there should be more to it. You should have to complete some great quest, slay the dragon with a rock, climb the mountain alone in winter or cross the ocean on an open raft to be granted such an ability. But it's far easier than that, or at least for the LUC and I it was.
It's that simplicity that has covered the earth with humans. What is it, 6.5 billion and counting? Every one of them born to parents, every one of them a tiny little figure at 14 and half weeks like we saw on the ultrasound. Banal indeed.

I was one of those people who only saw the ubiquitousness of children. I even told my brother when he had his first child "No, you don't need to send me a picture of the baby. At that age they all look the same, send me a picture when he starts looking like a real human." I was, needless to say, an asshole. Sorry Dave.

I still feel that way and yet I've come to understand the amazement too. I'm trying hard to hold these two things at the same time because that's what keeps the sparkle in life, wonder at the banal, seeing the miraculous in the everyday. We get so, well, just plain used to things that we lose sight of their essential nature.

The stars are just as beautiful the thousandth time you see them as they are the first. The only thing that's changed is how you perceive them. You can choose your perceptions, and that's a huge lesson that my unborn child is already teaching me. I hope she (or he) doesn't grade on the curve, turns out I'm a bit of a slow learner.

So, do you want to see a picture of my kid?

Hearts on Lent; or, What I had for lunch

2007-02-23T01:16:00.000+11:00

I had an Amy's Black Bean Burrito.

Total Fat: 8g

Saturated: 1g

Trans: 0g

Cholesterol 0mg

Sodium 580mg

Carbohydrate 44g

Fiber 4g

Sugars 4g

Protein 9g

Vitamin A 10%DV

Calcium 8%

Vitamin C 40%

Iron 20%

Years ago I'd eat a peanut butter and honey sandwich for lunch. I'd often make them for myself but just as often I'd be late for work and would rush out the door with nothing. My girlfriend at the time left our apartment later than I did so I'd call her and beg her to bring me something. Eventually she got tired of being treated like a mother. The day when she showed up at work , brown paper bag in hand, and told me off is very fresh in my mind. I'd felt like an asshole before, and I've felt like one since but that dressing down has really stuck with me.

This started a long period where I ate a bag of chips or a chocolate bar to tide me over until I got off work. When I changed locations I used to run down the street to McDonald's or A&W and get a burger and fries, but often I just wouldn't eat anything.

Slowly I began to change my habits. I found that not eating during the day was wiping me out to the point that dinner didn't revive me. I began to buy frozen dinners to eat at work. Then I met the LUC.

I never ate a lot of meat, I certainly never ate it at home as I have no idea how to cook it. The LUC is a vegetarian and I gave up meat without any real regret. My frozen lunches became veggie and that was that.

A month ago I went for a full physical. The coming baby provoked an unusually adult response in me and I figured it was time to get myself a GP and have a once over. I told my new doctor my whole medical history, depression, and colitis, and heart arrhythmia...OH MY! I gave her my family history: alcoholism, diabetes, and my father's fatal heart attack at a very young age.

She poked, prodded and listened. I was sent for blood tests and an ECG (Electro Cardio Gram). The blood results didn't surprise me, "My cholesterol is a little high? Well, I coulda told you that!" You see, despite my veggie status I still ate a lot of chocolate bars and cheese. Ah cheese! I don't have the writing skills to describe how much I love a good sharp Cheddar.

What did surprise me was the abnormality she found on the ECG. It appeared that I had Left Ventricle Hypertrophy, a thickening of the wall of my heart. This is usually caused by high blood pressure, but also can be caused by athleticism or be congenital. It can be serious and is an indicator of an increased risk of a sudden fatal heart attack.

I went of an ultrasound of my heart. I'd done enough reading to know that what I saw on the monitor wasn't a worst case scenario, but even to my untrained eye my left ventricle's wall was much thicker than the others.

It turns out that I have mitral valve prolapse, which is a fancy way of saying that one of the valves in my heart doesn't close properly. This isn't a big deal apparently, they estimate that up to 18% of young women have this problem. But it appears that this is causing the wall of my heart to thicken, basically my left ventricle is working too hard because it also has to pressurize the atrium. If this isn't fixed it could continue to grow until there's no space left to pump the blood. Mind you, this my interpretation of what's going on, I could be talking out my ass.

Now I wait for an appointment with cardiologist. I do very poorly in an absence of information and I'm struggling not to worry. I'm pretending this is training for having a teenager. Eventually your kid goes off on their own more and more and you have to simply hope they're ok. A situation that's not good for a worrier like me. Especially one with a bum heart.

I'm going to have an Amy's Black Bean Burrito for lunch again today.

Total Fat: 8g
Saturated: 1g
Trans: 0g
Cholesterol 0mg
Sodium 580mg
Carbohydrate 44g
Fiber 4g
Sugars 4g
Protein 9g
Vitamin A 10%DV
Calcium 8%
Vitamin C 40%
Iron 20%

Pretty healthy for pre-packaged food. No cholesterol, which I have to be much more careful of and low in saturated fats, also very heart healthy. But that sodium is a little high and I also have to be very careful of my blood pressure. I've lost 2kg in the last couple of weeks, just by stopping the unhealthy snacks. As the LUC's aero-belly grows mine is shrinking. I find this hilarious, but her? Not so much.

Tomorrow I'm going to have to eat something else and with all due respect to Maggie Mason there are at least 3 people who care very much about what I had for lunch: the LUC, my Doctor and my Mother.

Hearts on Valentine's Day

2007-02-15T01:43:00.000+11:00

I've been getting huge traffic on this site from people searching Owen's name. Normally this is a sleepy little corner of the internet and this came as a surprise to me.

There's a few things I should mention, for the sake of my conscience if nothing else.

First, I didn't really know Owen. The first time I met him I could tell that he had no interest in talking to me. "Right." I thought, "Fair enough." and left him alone. I'd say 'Hi' when the LUC and I went to dinner at the Richel/Hunt household and "Bye" if he was still awake when we left and that was the total of our interaction. The LUC made more of an effort and was usually rebuffed. Owen wasn't shy about making his wishes known. During his hospital stay we visited a number of times. Nothing had changed, he still didn't want anything to do with me.

I respect that. Hell, I admire it. If I, as a 40 year old adult, could get away with being as blunt and straight forward as Owen was in dealing with the world I'd be very happy indeed. And yet I found myself getting angry during the memorial because of this. Angry at myself for not making more of an effort to know him. Judging by the moving accounts told by those who knew him well, Owen and I shared a very similar world view. Angry also that there was no one to blame for this tragedy. I found myself wishing I believed in a god, any god, so I could curse him as a cruel, capricious bastard. I also felt anger for not doing more to help Daryl and Charlotte, and deep down I felt a little presumptuous because of these feelings.

The memorial was perfect. I was moved by the eloquence and sincerity of the speakers, moved by their love for the little boy who I hardly knew. I cried for a time. I confronted my shortcomings as friend and my shortcomings as an adult and was angry for a time. I even forgave myself, just a little and not without misgivings, for those shortcomings.

I learned things. It is better to care too much, even inappropriately, and forgive oneself for it than it is to have a stony heart and never know that one needs forgiveness. It is better to share tragedy. Just as many hands make for lighter labour, so too do many souls lessen the burden of grief. And most importantly, it is far better to have loved and laughed, been loved and been laughed at, even been scared and cried, for so short a time as six years than it is to have never lived at all. (Believe me, if I could go back and pound that lesson into the head of my angsty teenage self I'd do it.)

Over a decade ago I attended the funeral of Darren Howey, a young man who's life also ended far too soon. I made a promise to his father that I would never forget Darren. I've kept that promise. Darren now has the company of a strong-headed, fearless little boy and I sure hope they get along, because they will be in my heart together till the end of my days.

To all of you who knew Owen best and feel his passing deeply, you have my most sincere condolences.

In Memory of Owen Hunt Richel

2007-02-04T09:43:00.000+11:00

He was six years old and had been battling lukiemia. He died last night. Daryl and Charlotte, his parents, were an example to us all of love, courage and grace in the face of the hardest choices anyone would ever have to make.

I grieve. Less so for Owen because his time might have been short but he was loved fiercely and often and is now out of pain. I grieve for his parents, lovely people who are now faced with their own battle to heal. You don't bounce back from a thing like this, not quickly anyway.

This has been a strange time for the LUC and I. The following is an email I sent them on Teusday.

>I wanted to add to Claire's thoughts. Monday was a very odd day for
>us. To see Owen in such a state and realize just how great the
>difficulties of being a parent can be was very sobering. I had thought
>that to go from that to the first shadowy glimpse of our child-to-be
>would be hard.
>

> But it wasn't. In fact what I took away from our time with you,
>Charlotte and Owen was entirely positive. It was a realization that
>love begets strength even in the face of such terrible difficulties.
> I'm sure you've had your black moments, moments when you felt
> you couldn't continue, couldn't make one more hard decision.
> And yet the people I saw on Monday were making those decisions
> and contemplating more with a grace and a strength that I
>couldn't imagine having. Couldn't imagine that is until I looked at
>that tiny figure on the ultrasound monitor.
>
> Daryl and Charlotte, by allowing me to share in this difficult time, however
> briefly, you have shown me a glimpse of what it means to truly love a child.
>No matter what happens in the end, your ordeal will have had at least
>that one positive effect in the world, an effect for which I'll be forever
>grateful.

Yes you read that right, I'm about to be a father.* This isn't the way I wanted to announce this but you can see how Owens illness and death and my impending fatherhood are all mixed up in my feelings. Daryl and Charlotte were two of the first people we told about our engagement and about the pregnancy. (Sorry Mum.) Mostly because it was a good way to distract them from their worries.

So now we all go on. Daryl and Charlotte to their grieving and healing and the LUC and I to our wedding and baby prep. I hope that our happiness will help them just as the example they gave me of good parenting will help me. I am going to hold what I learned very close as I take this journey into the deep, dark, mysterious jungle of fatherhood.

*Yes, yes I have details. As of today we're 14 weeks and 1 day in. The ultrasound and blood work showed normal development and reduced the likelihood of having a Downs Syndrome child from 1 in 686 to 1 in 6000 or so. The tyke was 7.5 cm long. We don't know the sex yet and aren't going to find out, kinda seems like cheating. Yes the marriage proposal took place before the conception. We really didn't expect to conceive on the first try (I'm trying very hard not to feel too manly about that). The wedding going to be 2 weeks before the due date. I hope our child is like us in that he or she is never on time for anything. There's a wedding web page in the works for updates, I'll post the link as soon as it's up and running. And finally remember: wedding gifts and baby gifts are two different things.

Can he tell me where my keys are?

2007-02-04T05:19:00.000+11:00

We live in an increasingly superstitious world. The rise of religious fundamentalism, the popularity of the new age movement, the increase in psychic and ghost hunting shows on tv all point to this. It scares me.

It scares me far more than the drunk guy who came up to me as I was unlocking my bike and insisted that I was going to die. I have to say he was spooky. An older guy in a nice suit and overcoat with shiny shoes; he wasn't an incoherent homeless ranter. He was however, very insistent that getting on my bike was going to be fatal.

Pah, I say. I know folks, nice, normal, intelligent folks who would have taken him seriously. He was well dressed, he could have been a psychic who earned his living of the lottery, right? This is the danger of letting the para-normal into your life. You decide to believe one thing without insisting on good evidence and that can be the start of a downhill slide. If you're willing to believe X despite a lack of proof, why not Y or Z? Where does it end?

It ends with allowing some drunk who knows nothing about winter cycling project his unsubstantiated fears onto you. There's more than enough to worry about in the world without that sort of nonsense.

Going on

2007-01-25T01:54:00.000+11:00

We, all of us, cannot see into the future. We stand in the hall and peer around the corner and are greeted with an imperfect view. The difference is that when I look ahead I see nothing but silent dangers lurking in the shadows. Others see infinite possibilities, a path that can lead anywhere.

I'm so very tired of fear and yet there's so much in this world to be fearful of. I do my level best not to lie to myself, take pride in it in fact. But you have to deceive yourself just a little bit in order to be happy. You have to tell yourself it's all going to be alright even though sometimes it most definitely won't be alright. You have to purposefully ignore the unpleasant realities that you can do nothing about.

I'm learning how to do this, being forced to, truth be told. And like many a child I'm coming to this education unwilling, grumpy and uncooperative. I just hope that by nap time I'll be so entranced by the shiny blocks and rainbow crayons that I'll have forgotten that I was supposed to be throwing a tantrum.

Dang

2007-01-22T18:33:00.000+11:00

I've had a very bad week. So now that the new one has started, technically speaking, I'm hoping for an improvement.

Wish me luck.

My morning

2007-01-11T05:55:00.001+11:00

I left the LUC asleep in our bed and rode out into the blizzard. It was hard.

She's really ill, wheezing and coughing all night, and cold despite three layers of comforters, touque and scarf. I piled all my clean hankies on the bannister, she's going to need them. She called me a "good man" for going to work despite her plea to stay home and muttered something about "...taking care of your obligations." as I tucked her in and rustled away in my cold weather gear. Yah, it was hard to leave. Was it the right thing to do? How do I decide which obligation is greater?

The blizzard promised by Enviroment Canada wasn't so bad. The wind had died down from the 60km/h gusts of the night before but it was still snowing hard. The snow was 5cm or so on the ground, more where it had drifted but the riding wasn't too hard. There had only been one bike and a couple of peds before me on the bike path and fresh, un-tramped snow only makes it a little harder to pedal.

The streets were worse. The uneven packing left by the cars is a bit tricky. It can push you around as you move from one density to another. My glasses were fogged over pretty bad, I hit the surface streets after sweating my way out of the valley. I could see big shapes fine but the subtle differences in snow conditions? No way.

The trick is to trust your skills. Hold the bars gently, ride it out as the bike slips and turns and above all: relax. Being tense leads to overcorrecting which leads to bruising.

Not being able to see perfectly actually helps. Instead of anticipating how hard that next streach is going to be and thus getting tense, you simply ride through it and react only to what actually occurs.

Using the right bike helps too. My fixed gear has very narrow nobby tires. They cut through the snow to the hard surface underneath much better than fat mountain bike tires.

As I move into this new phase of my life, marrriage and some other big changes, I'd do well to remember all this. You learn the skills you need and practise them as best you can. You put on approriate clothes and make sure your tools are in good working order. Then you relax and ride through it and if you make a mistake? Well, bruises heal.

An Hour and a Half

2006-12-29T01:29:00.000+11:00

So, do you want to hear about how I proposed to the LUC? Sure you do, the spam I get implies that the internet is full of romantics, well, er, something like romantics anyway.

This is a perfect story for my new expanded content blog. It features two things I'm passionate about in the same way I'm passionate about music: the LUC and bicycles. Sure, I haven't made a secret about my bike fetish on this blog, but I don't think it's clear just how important they are to my life.

You see, the LUC and I met through a shared love of bikes. She does a bike traffic report on the local campus and community radio station. It's an antidote to the ususal "There's a stall on Whitemud Drive." and "Watch out for radar northbound on 109th Street." sort of report you get on commercial radio.

I used to listen every Wednesday morning to this lovely Australian voice enthusing about all things bi-wheeled and human powered and wonder just what she was like in real life. At this point I'd been commuting by bike year-round for about a decade but I wasn't really part of the bike community. Indeed, I didn't really know anyone in any of the sub groups that can be labeled "Bike Nuts". If had been part one of those groups I'd have met the LUC much sooner.

To speed up a long story, she held a contest and I won. All I had to do was guess the email address she'd been given by the radio station and drop her a line. I was the only one who entered and she presented my prize (a bell) on-air. That was the beginning of our story together, and the end? Well, it's nowhere in sight.

Let me make something clear: the nature of marriage should be entirely up to the individuals involved. So long as they're consenting adults anything goes. Religion, government and families should only be involved to the extent that the participants wish them to be involved and my feeling is that institutional intervention in affairs of the heart should be minimal if not completely absent.

So why get married?

The LUC has made it clear that she's willing to make a long term commitment to our relationship without the rigmarole of marriage. I mean, she's said she's willing to have a child with me, and if that isn't a long term commitment? Well, I'll buy a Hummer and start voting Conservative.

The problem of course with children as sign of commitment is that that is a commitment through a third party. I'm not the sort of person who'd walk away from any child I had any part in creating. This means of course, that even if the LUC and I can't sustain a relationship I will always be a part of her life. Pretty obvious. So before we have that external tie I'd like to make a commitment to her and her alone. It just seems like the right thing to do.

On to the story.

This summer we'd discussed getting married and agreed that is was a good idea. This discussion took place at a fine restaurant, the kind where the wait staff not only take the time to know your name, but also treat cyclists who change into their fancies in the washroom exactly the same as they treat those who debark for SUV's in tailored suits and designer frocks.

Our conversation was overheard by our server and she made a joke that involved asking if we were married. I replied that I had in fact just proposed, mostly joking. The LUC looked me in the eye and said "No. No you didn't. And you better do it right buddy." Ah, it's good to have unambiguous instructions: a fuss had to be made.

Over the years I've made a habit of tying little gifts to the LUC's bike when its been locked up outside. I've left chocolates, flowers, bicycle Haikus even a couple of chemical hand warmers taped to the saddle on a particularly cold winter's day. This seemed like a good place to start.

My original plan was to put some kind of clue on her bike directing her to the opera, where we had our first date. Waiting at the opera house would be one of our friends who would have the next clue directing her to where we first kissed where another friend would be waiting ect.

The problem was, I couldn't decide which friends to include and she wasn't attending her dance class (the scene of many a gifting) regularly enough to set a date to swing into action. The encroaching winter was also a factor; if I wanted a "Yes" making her ride all over the city in the cold and snow was poor idea. I had to scale it back a bit.

I ended up making a crossword puzzle in which the answers were Meet, Me, Where, We, First, Met. I tied this to her bike with a bunch of red and white balloons. I then rode along the route she'd most likely take tying balloons to lamp posts, guard rails and street signs. The point of the balloons was to make sure she find me and to give myself something to do to keep the nerves at bay while I waited.

It turned out that she knew where to go (she's got her some smarts, that woman o' mine) and I wasn't really nervous at all. Excited yes, but not scared. That was the most surprising part of the whole thing, my lack of nerves.

I'm a doubting person. On a good day this makes me curious and eager to learn, on a bad day it paralyzes. I doubt myself, my emotions and my motivations more than I doubt faith healers, astrologers and economists. But from the time I tied the crossword to her bike to when she said "Yes" I had no doubt at all.

I spent an hour and a half waiting the LUC to arrive. It was a time were I wasn't just convinced I was doing the right thing, because conviction is a conscious act and I wasn't really thinking about it at all. For that hour and a half I simply existed in a state were spending the rest of my life with the LUC was right. It wasn't a decision or any other kind of thought, it simply was. I'm hard pressed to remember another time when I felt that good.

So the next time she and I are having trouble (And we will, this isn't a perfect world, nor are we perfect people) I'll be able to look back on that hour and a half of peace and certainty. I might not be able to feel it in our moment of conflict, but I'll remember that I once did. I'll remember that I can feel that way and will again in the future.

And that my friends makes all the legal nonsense and chaos of getting married worthwhile.

Alright, alright!

2006-12-06T02:25:00.000+11:00

Here they are, my excuses for not blogging:

-Life has been terribly busy of late. I've been feeling like I have no time for anything that isn't a basic bodily function.
-This blog started as a means to keep myself motivated to practice guitar. It quickly became an exploration of why it was that I spent so much time doing music. It really puzzled me because I wasn't even playing gigs let alone being financially rewarded. Then I figured it out and I lost a lot of my motivation.
-I got engaged. Yup, the former Lovely Un-indicted Co-conspirator (LUC) has agreed to be indicted. It took me a long time to set up and execute my plan for the proposal and as you can imagine this was the biggest thing in my life for quite a while. If I was going to write about anything it would be that* and, well, she occasionally drops by these here parts. As does my mother and there's no way I'd live it down if she found out about the engagement by reading it in my blog.
-There's other big news that I can't talk about yet.

Anyway, those are my reasons such as they are. The plan is to open up my subject matter to include more than just my musical life although I suspect that will always be a large factor in what I have to say. I've never had a huge readership and don't expect one, but there are a few people who still drop by regularly despite my lack of posts. Thanks folks.

*I will be writing about it as soon as I have some time.

Still on the road

2006-09-20T03:09:00.000+10:00

Here I am in Moab. One of the mountain biking mecca's. These last few weeks have been crazy. Las Vegas was surreal. Zion Canyon, the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, Moab, this whole part of the world: all surreal in a much more natural way. It's the sort of landscape that must be fake, the beauty of it is that absurd. It has an atheistic that speaks to the part of the brain that never climbed down from the trees, the part that still dwells on that African Savannah of our flint-knapping ancestors.

The trip's been pretty good. The highlights so far: riding the roller coaster at New York, New York in Las Vegas. Seeing Penn and Teller. Getting caught in a thunderstorm during a mountain bike ride at the Grand Canyon (lowlight actually, very scary indeed). Riding the Thunder Mountain trail in Red Canyon and getting around around almost all of the switchbacks on the scary descent. Driving across the desert of south west Utah blasting Richard Thompson's Mock Tudor album as the sun sets. All good stuff.

We're going to be in Moab for a couple of days then on to Fort Collins.

I've played my guitar a couple of times, mostly waiting for laundry to dry. Musically, I've been more inspired by the book I've been reading "Our Band Could Be Your Life" by Michael Azarred than the landscape and the camping, but I'm sure that'll change once I start sleeping in a comfy bed and having regular showers. :)

The Jet Set lifestyle

2006-09-01T10:45:00.000+10:00

The LUC and I are going on three weeks vacation* starting next week. First to Madison Wisconsin for ProBike/ProWalk. Then flying to Las Vegas for two days, 'cause well, I've always liked Hunter S. Thompson's description of looking west out of his hotel room window and seeing the high-tide mark where the idealism of the 60's washed up around Las Vegas and retreated back. We're then renting a car and heading out to the Grand Canyon, Moab for some mountain biking, Fort Collins for beer and more bikes and ending in Denver.

The last time I spent longer than a day or two in the States the Canadian dollar was worth 9¢ more than the American. I'm really looking forward to it. Despite the bad image that the current US government is projecting around the world I've discovered through these here internets that there are plenty of warm, giving, funny and thoughtful neighbours to the south. (See above links for some of those folk)

I haven't the faintest idea if all this is achievable in the time we have, but the point really is to spend some time together, camp, ride bikes, boggle at wonders both man made and natural and generally relax.

This is not what you're waiting for.

*I know, believe me I know! She just gets back from a month in Australia and off again after a mere week at home. In all fairness she's speaking at Probike/Prowalk so that part of the trip is work and she's having to cram a whole month's worth of regular work into 5 days. There's more than a little stress going on right now.

I'm waiting too

2006-08-29T13:29:00.000+10:00

People, people, people, this is suppose to be a sleepy little corner of the internet. Ya make one comment on the Blurb's blog and next thing you know your site meter actually has something to do. :)

I can't talk about it yet. Sorry. There's an order to these things. I'm sure you understand.

It's all down hill

2006-08-06T18:10:00.000+10:00

So there's a name for it, I suspected as much. What I didn't realize is that it's a well known psychological phenomenon. It's called flow.

This is the state that I seek, the state that I haven't the skill to achieve in anything but music. Oh, I've felt it riding my bike, and a couple of times back when I fenced, but music is where it happens the most consistently and the most profoundly.

I'm not sure it's a good thing to know what to call it. I'm relentlessly curious and now I'm going to have to look into it. It might help, I could get some good tips on how to achieve it. But it might make it harder too. Conscious thought is the enemy of flow and the more I have to think about, well, the more I think. Truly, my head is a cement mixer, all restless and churny when on the go and setting up hard when at rest. No in-between.

What I really want to know is the connection, if any, between the flow state and the meditative state. The obvious difference being that in a flow state the body is active, but what about the mind? Interesting.

The bike fest gig, it seems so long ago now, went well enough. I had a great time at least. K wasn't really enjoying it though. The settings on his bass amp got messed up in transit and he struggled through the first couple of tunes trying to get it sounding right. Years ago I took some whiteout and marked my settings for just this eventuality, I'll have to suggest it. He also broke a string. This doesn't happen often with bass guitars, those strings are pretty thick. He also broke the one he replaced it with which is frankly weird. It might be he was nervous and over tightened it or there could be something wrong with that bass. Whatever, it really threw him.

Eventually he got going again with the wrong gauge string used as a temporary substitute. This was the point the gig got really fun. Despite the chaos I wasn't really uptight and as we got started again the band struggled. In the past I'd let such things get to me to the point of derailing my own performance. Not this time. I laid back and listened as we slipped in and out of time, dropping into the pocket* and falling out over and over. It was like listening to a car warming up on a cold winter's morning, running rough then steady in slowly inverting proportions.

The thing that had me grinning like a dope fiend was that I knew it was going to be ok. I could feel it from the band, we'd been here before, struggling and disjointed and everyone knew we'd get past it. What's more, we managed to convey that feeling to each other as we played. It really was astounding. I don't believe in telepathy or any of that sort of mumbo-jumbo but I do believe in the human ability to gain meaning from the smallest of physical clues. I'm a pretty cynical and negative person so the absolute conviction I felt that it was all going to be ok was really, really great. If only I could feel such optimism at will.

The last half of our second set was as good as we've ever played in front of an audience. We were tight and energized and made such a glorious racket that it's a wonder that Apollo himself didn't show up to see what the fuss was about. Flow indeed, a veritable four branched river if I may be permitted another watery metaphor.

Oh, and the memorabilia? They sold as a group for $30. This still makes me laugh.

*An expression used in jazz to mean perfectly in time, especially of bass playing that is 'in the centre' of the beat, i.e. neither slightly leading, or ahead of, nor slightly behind, or dragging the beat. [I took this definition from a on-line music dictionary. While strictly true, I think that when you're deep in the pocket you're constantly and consciously making the choice to stay on the beat, push it or drag it as the tune demands rather than simply being perfectly centered all the time.]

I have a plan

2006-07-21T10:46:00.000+10:00

I'm pretty sure that there must be some kind of bloggy hell I'm going to for my lack of posts. So very busy: two jobs, the band, a relationship, a new cat and The Tour* are eating up all available time.

The LUC is going away for a month starting next week. Hello pseudo bachelorhood! Yup, it's going to be ice-cream for breakfast, lunch and dinner except when it's ice-cream for breakfast and lunch and beer for dinner. And hey, does anyone know how to get a hold of some cheerleaders who'll bring their own keg and perhaps some lawn darts?

Every other time she's gone away I've told myself I'll get a lot of practicing and or composition done, but who am I kidding? I'll probably just work more and spend the rest of my time sitting around in the self created rubble of dirty dishes and unpickedup undergarments. Joy.

*Yesterday's stage was 5 frickin hours. Even I'm not enough of a fan to get through that in one sitting.

Wrocking and Wrenching

2006-06-24T12:55:00.000+10:00

The band is doing it's only regular gig tomorrow. I'm referring of course to the glorious B ikeology festival. A fine celebration of all things bicycle and a fun musical time.l We're the only electrified, rawk band in the line up, there's nothing like hearing slapback echo off of downtown office buildings after an hour or two of string quartets and singer/songwriter strumming.

For those of you who are a little soft in the cranium, we're going to be auctioning off E levators memorabilia, proceeds going to the P eople's Pedal. Sure this is a little conflict of interest-esque as the I'm the only paid employee of said not-for-profit, but we only expect to raise around $7.00 total for the broken pick, drum stick, string and used ear plugs each mounted on a handsome plague and signed by a band member.

I'm also going to be doing free bike checks and maintenance after we play. Had to point out to the organizers that I can't wrench first in a venue with no running water. Bike folk, lovely people but not always the most practical.

Anyway, the vast majority of hits I get here (all 3 a day) are from elsewhere in the world, so I'll dedicate our version of Love Will Keep Us Together to you few blog readers and turn my amp to 11 for the solo, if the winds are right you just might hear it....

*That's me in the bucket hat with the sound guy extraordinaire M ike T ully, drummer E with her dog D igger at last year's event.

The little things

2006-06-23T15:18:00.000+10:00

Enough with the whining already, time for something positive:

Hmmm, er, well.... I did run out a pen this week. This is the first time that I've used a pen from purchase to empty without losing it or having it fail in some way. I don't understand why that makes me so happy, but it makes me smile every time I think about it.

I'm planning on making the corpse into a bike mojo for my fixed gear. There's got to be some kinda good luck in such an object, oui?

150 proof pity*

2006-06-13T06:31:00.000+10:00

I turned 40 not so very long ago. I don't look it, well, most of the time anyway. If you catch me in the wrong mood and in a certain light I'm sure that my years show. Something around the eyes, a weariness, a brittleness that tells. Or maybe I'm reading too much into photos in which I know for damn sure I felt my age and more when they were taken.

I'll never be a front man, I don't have the knack. The "Lookit me, lookit me!" gene never expressed. But there is a desire. A desire to scream at the world in a voice that can't be ignored. To make others feel how I do, even if it's only a pale copy. I wish this were an act of joy on my part. But it's not. Joy is fleeting round these parts and it startles easily. Look at it too long and it's gone with nary a hoof print left behind. Pain, doubt, anger those are the things I know best.

Why do I want to share that? I have no desire to make anyone feel bad. So why? Is it because shared joy is increased and shared pain is lessened? That's part of it, I think. But even more it's because I don't know what it's like to feel normal. Or at least I don't think I do.

Deep down I hope that someone would hear something that I've written and say "You poor dear." I hope that they will be appalled and sympathetic in equal measure, not because I crave pity. No, I crave the certainly that how I feel is not normal. Because if this is as good as it gets, I'm not sure I could bear it.

Hope. Such a small word. So over-used and under-defined as to be a mere wisp of fogged breath on a cold and blustery winters day. But there it is, hope. Lying in wait in the overgrown corn maze of my mind. The sudden surprise of a horizon glimpsed after hours lost in green and narrow passages. Hope. At once both as unfamiliar as a rusting tool from the age of horses and as deeply rooted as the seventh generation working the land.

Playing in the band sucks, it takes a lot of time and is a constant reminder of my lack of drive. What have I done to be successful? Little and less. But it's also a real world manifestation of the hope that I refuse to consciously acknowledge: that how I am now is not permanent and that someday I'll be....I'll be.....Better? Happy? Peaceful? Normal? Damned if I know what exactly, but something other than how I am now.

*Cause this is a distillation of how I feel. Take my normal angst, boil it for a few days, feed it through the condenser of a very late night and voila! Angst deluxe, suitable only for aesthetic or perhaps stripping paint.

The stars? They're still there.

2006-06-02T13:07:00.000+10:00

Last night I was working the bikeshare job, setting up some new bikes and getting eaten alive by mosquitoes. With visions of West Nile virus dancing in my head I got two done and took them out to the stations. I rolled down the little hill to the High Level bridge, two bikes in tow, just as the sun slipped below the horizon. As sunsets go, it wasn't much, just a smudge of brown and orange right on the horizon. Not enough dust in the air I guess, and there wasn't a cloud in the sky.

I love to look up here. They talk about the "big sky" of the prairies and, well, the phrase doesn't really cut it. Perspective is everything and as I watched the sky darken through every iteration of blue there were times where I felt like I could stretch my arm and get fingerprints on the dome of the heavens. Somehow that made it seem even bigger.

As I coasted to a stop the Moon was up and Venus was the only other pinhole to be seen. By the time I got my helmet off there were two other stars (planets perhaps) peeking out. I'd look away and when I looked back there'd be a couple more stars, invisible the instant before. I haven't felt so peaceful in ages.

I also love skygazing here because for so much of the year it's cold, painfully cold, even dangerously cold at times. In that weather you don't stop peddling unless you have to. You don't look anywhere but where you're going, that focus is vital to keeping warm and safe.

The band practiced last night for the first time in a month. We sucked. I'm so out of practice that my calluses are thin. But it was good too; it was a reminder that I have to once again raise my head musically. I need to see beyond my current anxiety and lack of motivation because there's a universe out there waiting to come out one tiny bit at a time. All I have to do is look up.

Nothing to do with my upcoming birthday

2006-05-26T09:32:00.000+10:00

Tired. Frantic. In a cycle of anxiety that's entirely a creation of the chemicals in my head. I've not been able to settle to anything in the last months. It always feels like I'm running behind, even if I'm not. I'm lo-fi and there's a loose wire somewhere and the record is worn down to pops and hiss. Bah.

One of these days I'm going to go back and see if there's a pattern to these "poor, poor me" posts. Maybe I'm just somekinda half-assed lycanthrope, one were my brain is the only thing that gets hairy and enraged come the full moon.

Hey Fred, I hope you're doing ok.

Using You

2006-04-13T14:33:00.000+10:00

To those few of you who come here fairly frequently, MJ, D-Ray, Fred, the one who's server is in Sunnyvale, the one in Kelowna and the few from other places: I'm sorry I don't post more often.

The reason is quite simple; if I don't have anything to say that's interesting to me I'd rather just shut the hell up. I mean, there's a reason I play in an instrumental band.

If something unusual happens or my interest gets peaked about an aspect of my musical life it tends to gurgle around in my slushy brain for a few weeks. I'm always trying to find the why and how of these things or the connection to a bigger issue. If I can't force some sort of conclusion out of my experience or observation I tend to let it drop. Yup, I'm taking a very limited topic blog and reducing the chance of a steady readership even more by deliberately restricting my output.

Hmmmm, and is there a reason I'm not famous yet? :)

This isn't a pity-fest, far from it. I simply wanted to say thanks to those of you who find what I write even moderately interesting. I don't want anyone thinking I don't notice and appreciate the modest attention I get on these here internets.

So thanks folks. Thanks for the comments, thanks for occasionally pushing my hit counter into double digits and most of all thanks for letting me use you. I put a great deal more effort into these post than I ever did writing a journal, and the reason for that is the public nature of it. If you folk didn't visit I'd have never come to some very important conclusions about my life and its relationship to music, cause frankly, without an audience I'm a lazy sot. The cheque's in the mail.

(Oh and BWE, that comment your brother made was classic, a perfect example of why playing live is so much fun. If it'd been me I'd have tried to get him to repeat it into a live mike, but then I'm a cruel sort.)

Redux

2006-03-30T16:27:00.000+11:00

So the day passes. I calm down. I no longer feel like beating the guy till he's as damaged as the woman he hit. I mean, I don't believe he's an evil man. The look on his face as he sat in the back of the police car was not one of triumph. He made a mistake but unfortunately someone else is paying the price for that mistake. And that my friends is the crux: the consequences of poor driving are far out of proportion to the punishment that our laws provide. Consider this, the man drove away after the police were done with him. At the very least someone who's put another person in hospital should not be allowed to drive away.

I can't say this often enough: driving a car is the most dangerous thing most people do in a day. Complete care and attention is the absolute minimum that the task requires. I beg of you, think about that for moment the next time you get behind a wheel.

Anyway, I was calm until I left work. There on the street was a small pile of sand, a dark red stain in the middle. The cops had put it down to soak up the blood. I stood there and watched as cars slowly tracked it to the west, each one carried away a tiny piece of that poor woman, unknowing and uncaring. Lynch mob. Justice ragged and personal, it sucks to know that I have the capacity for the these feelings, god help me if I'm ever in a position to act on them.

Anger

2006-03-30T06:29:00.000+11:00

A woman is lying in the crosswalk in front of the store right now. She's old and she's hurt. Hit by a fucking SUV turning the corner and not paying attention. This woman is elderly, a mother, her grey haired daughter ran up as I was watching, crying "What happened." Her mother is crying in pain and bewilderment. Have you every heard a grandmother cry. A woman who's probably seen most of life's ups and downs, has given birth and probably buried a few people too. And now she's lying in the middle of the street crying as strangers watch helplessly as the abulance guys work.

I am so angry, I can barely keep it together.

For those of you with cars: driving is the most dangerous thing you do every day. 1.3 fucking million people are killed by cars every year in this world and over 500 million are injured. One of whom is right out front of my workplace right now. An inattentive driver has reduced a grown adult to a state helplessness that no one should be reduced to.

Anger doesn't even begin to touch it. PAY ATTENTION OR YOU'LL BE THE ONE ON YOUR CELL PHONE TO YOUR LAWYER. fuck

Whammer

2006-03-18T13:26:00.000+11:00

The gig a couple of weeks ago is now but a fuzzy memory and now we've gotten down to work. Make no mistake about it, recording stuff is work. When you play live mistakes are gone instantly. Every beat is a new beginning, provided you don't make too many mistakes, the audience won't really notice. But recording, well, it's for keeps.

A live performance is about getting the band working together as a single unstoppable unit whose goal is to make the maximum impact on the audience. A hammer. When it's working right those listening will get what you're on about whether they want to or not. They might not go home knowing the chorus or humming that pretty little turnaround from the last bridge, but they should have felt the emotions you intended to convey. Of course on a bad night all they go home with is the emotional equivalent of a smashed thumb, but hey, that's why bars serve booze.

Recording is a whole 'nuther kettle of metaphor. Because any mistake you make is permanent, it's less about drive and unity of momentum and more about getting the details right. It's like building watches: little tiny pieces slotted into their places just so. Everything has to fit 'cause there's no place to hide when it can be played back over and over.

The process of getting the details right often sucks the life out of a great song. It's a common experience were the band was great in performance but the CD bought at the merch table sucks. There's a thing called "Red Light Fever" where performers who know the material inside and out still tense up when the recording light is lit. When you're trying not to make mistakes it's inevitable that you're going to play cautiously and caution isn't exciting.

So how the hell do you build a watch that's also be a hammer?

We're recording the band as a whole, where everyone plays at the same time rather than overdubbing each part separately. This help keep the energy up but it means that if any one of use has a bad take the whole track is lost.

We've also been employing tricks like playing two takes in a row without stopping in the hopes that the second will be a little less stressful. Segmenting the songs as much as possible so that a mistake in the last section won't ruin the whole take helps too.

All in all everyone seems to be enjoying this session a lot more than the last one. I'm not sure why. Maybe we're getting better at it. I know for myself I'm really enjoying the process of watchmaking.

We've isolated the instruments as much as possible and everyone is using headphones to hear each other. I love this. I can tailor who's in my ears and make it whisper quiet if I want. Sweet indeed. I've found all I really need is the drums to be clear and present with just enough bass and lead guitar to know where I am in the song.

Now that I can hear myself and the drums clearly I'm finding that it's getting easier and easier to fit my rhythm into what E's doing. Our parts are beginning to dovetail together in a way that they never did before. This is immensely satisfying. I'm getting a kick out of it that rivals what I get from hearing an audience respond.

There's satisfaction in swinging a hammer, it's primal and visceral. But there's satisfaction in an intricate job done right as well. In some ways it even goes deeper. Hammers are all about the moment and immediacy and because of that the feeling they create fades quickly. (Insert drug reference here.) But watchmaking speaks to grander things. Putting it all together correctly is a reflection of the intricacy of our world and perhaps even the universe as a whole. Each part has its role and the sum can't be achieved unless everything is working properly. This is as true for songs as it is for ecosystems and I think on some level we can feel that. Maybe it's hubris, treading on ground that is meant for the gods alone, or maybe we're just inseparable from our baroque clockwork universe. We are in it, and of it to such an extent that creating our own little universes is what we're meant to do.

If so, it doesn't matter if we can get the watch to be a hammer; the attempt is enough.

Time

2006-02-28T04:24:00.000+11:00

Tack, Thock, Tack, Thock... I'm not sure why my dress shoes make different sounds left from right, but I like it. It's musical. Black and a little pointy in toes, their wooden heels tap out a duple rhythm as fundamental to humanity as death and taxes. It makes me smile as I hurry back after donning my stage duds.

Saturday was the band's first gig since last summer. Well, to call it a gig is stretching things a mite. The P eople's P edal, the bike share co-op I work for, had it's AGM and to entice members to attend we held an after party. The total audience was maybe 10 people, of whom at least half were either sleeping with, or related genetically to, one of the band members. That didn't matter at all.

The band cracked wise and tasteless, the audience laughed and heckled and the girls...the girls danced. It was fine night.

We didn't play exceptionally well, but there were moments of ferociousness. Moments of drive and energy greater than the sum of our parts. There were even moments of rockdom, where tongues got stuck out and secret devil signs were made.

I'll be 40 in a couple of months. I don't feel it and I don't really look it, but there it is. I'll never be a rock star despite how I acted on stage this weekend.

I had a single moment of clarity during the set, a moment where I could picture how we might look to a disinterested observer. A bunch of never-were's kidding themselves that they're 20 years younger and a whole lot hipper.

Oh, I had a moment of clarity all right and I didn't care one whit. Instead I fell on the first chord of the chorus like an angel robbed of grace, got my head banging and grinned at K as he and I smacked the ever-lovin' shit out of the rhythm. It was glorious.

For that 45 minutes time had stopped being a matter of birth days and hair thinning on top but thickening in orifices. Time was kick and snare, verse, chorus, bridge, the count in and the pregnant pause before the big final chord. Time was ours to play with, to subjugate and subdivide, to throw out into space where it was caught by the feet of women.

I've long since lost count of the number of gigs I've done, but this one was special.

Tack, thock, Tack, thock...time is inexorable, but every now and then, it's beautiful too.

2006-02-13T17:31:00.000+11:00

I can tap into my feelings of grief at the drop of a hat, or milk carton for that matter. I've jokingly told people that I can cry on demand, and in truth, I can. All it takes is a little method acting, a conscious decision to think about all the things that hurt and boom, waterworks.

I'm still trying to decide what kind of songs to work on. I had felt that getting all of the angst out would be a good idea, but now I'm not so sure. A while ago I read this, and while some of the arguments in the comments were over my head, the basic gist rang true to me.

The Freudian notion of repression might not be what I'm doing. I feel sad lots, I think about and clearly remember the things that led me to my current mental state. Is that repression? Somehow I don't think so. If it's not repression, what good am I going to do by writing songs about it?

What if expressing the sadness is merely reinforcing it, building up neurons in the areas of my brain devoted to those feelings. What if I'm practicing sad? Wouldn't it be better to practice happy? And how the hell would I do that anyway?

The best argument I have for writing sad songs* is that I can sing them with conviction. Total honesty even. It doesn't take me any effort to inhabit that sort of song. I'm a lousy singer and not having to "fake it till ya make it" on the emotional expression appeals to me. Hell, it might be the only thing I have going for me as a singer.

My musical life is shifting again and making this question relevant. The band is recording again and around the time that finishes our practice space could go away. If that happens and we have a recording that most of us are happy with, well, I suspect the band will fold. There really isn't a lot of motivation in the group anymore. So, it looks like the digital recorder is going to be my primary musical outlet in the near future. Which means writing songs, which means making a decision.

What's it to be: sincere sadness or cartoon joy?

*No, not because they "...say so much." No offense to Mr.'s John and Taupin, but that's got to be the worst lyric in the history of pop.

Who is this Art guy anyway?

2006-02-01T12:07:00.000+11:00

I believe in truth.

[Oh, god. Here we go again with the philosophizing.]
{Now, now, give him a chance.}

Unfortunately truth comes in two flavours: relative and concrete.

[Good, it's a binary thing, shouldn't take too long.]

Concrete truth is the province of science. The problem is that most people don't understand how science is supposed to work. Science is all about observing and explaining the natural world. The goal is to build up a testable body of knowledge that we can provisionally accept as fact. All theories in science are open to refutation, if they can't be falsified it isn't part of science. The reality we're observing doesn't change, but our understanding of it does.

[Really? What the hell is he on about, isn't this a music blog?]
{Patience my dear, patience. I'm sure this is relevant, er, somehow.}

Relative truth is the a trickier matter. It includes all the cultural assumptions, rules and customs we live by. Things that are subject to constant change.

[Huh?]

For example, killing people isn't permitted in our society. Except in certain situations, like for example, during wartime. The situations in which lethal force is acceptable have changed through the years. Dueling is certainly not allowable today, but as little as 150 years ago it was a fact of life. It was a cultural truth that you could take up arms and kill those who had offended you.

[Killin' people, now we're getting somewhere. Where did I put that scimitar...?]
{That's not nice....and put that letter opener down before you hurt yourself!}

So if concrete truth is the province of science, what is the system for understanding relative truth?

[Rhetorical right? Please tell me he's being rhetorical.]

Religion is one answer. A flawed answer in my opinion. The problem with religion is that it tries to make relative truth into absolute truth. It takes the shifting tides of human interactions and tries to nail them down. With about as much success as trying to nail down a real tidal flow would have.

[Now he's done it. Flames ahoy!]
{Just because he's getting all nautical doesn't mean you have to.}

This isn't to say that most religions don't have something good to offer. Just that their, "We're right and everyone else is wrong.", approach causes more problems than it solves. Also, at it's worse religion stagnates a culture by not allowing it to grow and evolve.

[Evolve! Evolve? Is he trying to piss people off?]
{I think he's trying to sort something out, you know thinking out loud. Stop interrupting}

For the record, I also think it's a really bad idea when people try and make concrete truths relative. The "new age" folk are often guilty of this. I don't care how much peyote you've ingested, how aligned your chakras are or how much you believe that all reality is a creation of your own mind: when you jump off of something you're going to accelerate at 9.8 meters per second squared. The result of which is very messy if you do it from any real height.

[Ha! He's picking on everyone. A glutton for punishment.]
{If you can't keep quiet I'm going to take away the remote, I mean it!}

So what is the answer? In short: art.

[....Art!?]
{Shut it!}

Art is the expression of relative truths. It is our way to glimpse into the lives, emotions and realities of other people in a form that can connect at deeper level than daily interactions allow. It is our way of understanding who we are as a group and what matters to people outside of our group.

It's for this reason that you know you're deep in the shit when outside bodies start trying to control artists. It means that that group, be it governmental, religious or what have you, is trying to define the truth for everyone. This never works for long of course. People are just too diverse to be pinned down this way. My evidence of this: if it was possible make the relative truths of our lives concrete then someone would have done it by now. We'd all be believe the same things, live the same way, be in essence the same person. The very thought of such a grey, unvaried world makes my viscera shrink away from my skin.

Art is important. Important in a way that we often fail to realize when we're trying to find something to go on the wall above the couch or are scrolling through the ipod playlists.

[Looks like he's done, can I talk now?]
{I guess.}
[You know why he's on about this?]
{What do you mean, isn't he just giving an opinion? No wait, let me guess: He's trying to piss people off enough to generate some comments.}
[Oh, he's doing that alright, but I think he's got another motive.]
{And that would be....?}
[He's trying to convince himself that the time he's spent learning and playing music has some value over and above filling in time till he dies.]
{Huh, when did you become a brainiac?}
[Shut up.]
{You shut up!}
[......]
{......}
[Honey?]
{Yes dear?}
[I love you.]
{Come here you...}

Wheels and Spirals

2006-01-06T13:46:00.000+11:00

Still down, but not so out as to conjure the bad metaphor's of the last post.

One of the things that helped: I finished assembling my fixed gear bike! Yippee. The observant reader will note that the frame for the final product isn't the same as the one I started with. The original was just too messed up to fix.

Musically the band's on a holiday hiatus. But now that the bike's done I'm starting to feel the old itch to create some original tunes. Gotta have something to obsess over, don't yah know?

I did use my musical ability to build part of the bike. I can't afford a spoke tension gauge. A tool that's used to build wheels. It's important that the spokes have reasonably equal tension for the wheel to stay true.

I laced these wheels with alternating black and silver spokes. Unfortunately, the bike store gave me two different gauges ( thickness) of spokes. The hub I was putting them on has a disc brake so one set of spokes is shorter than the other to accommodate the brake rotor. This means that I had four different tensions to deal with. Thick spokes, thin spokes and left and right side of the wheel. I screwed it up on the first try.

By plucking the spokes and comparing the pitches I managed to tune each spoke of each group to the same tension. I'm not sure I would have managed it otherwise. Hooray for a musical education! Who knew it would be so practical?

Bike geek details:

It's an old "Made in Canada" Raleigh, Grand Prix, road bike frame with Tange 5 chromoly straight gauge tubing. Not a great frame, but in good shape and a spunky red colour. The handle bars are Bike Nasbar steel moustache bars. The stem is a no name downhill stem, the shortest one I could afford. 30mm reach and 10 degrees rise. I added a steerer tube extension to raise the bars up to about saddle height. The front brake is an Avid Mechanical disc brake. The front fork is a chromoly disc specific cyclocross fork. Front hub is a Real disc specific with sealed bearings. The cranks are Sugino 165mm track cranks running 1/8" inch chain. Rear hub is a Surley fixed/fixed flip flop. Gearing is 42 teeth on the front and 16 on the rear. Not an especially hard gearing but I live half way up a pretty steep hill. Planning on buying a 19 or 20 tooth cog to put on the other side for really snowy days. Saddle is Specialized Dolce with titanium rails. I found out yesterday that this is a woman's saddle. I got it out of the bottom of a sale bin. It had no packaging, but the price tag, $35 for a $100 saddle, was too hard to resist. Not too fussed bout the gender issue, it is in fact the most comfortable saddle I've ridden. Mind you my time on it has been pretty limited so far. Perhaps I have a large ass for a guy? Don't answer that.

I love riding this bike. I'm not sure I feel "one with the bike" and all the other mystical things people say about riding a fixed gear, but it sure is fun. The power transfer from legs to forward motion is incredible, there's no wasted energy and it's noticeable. It's also the most comfortable bike I own. Due mostly to obsessive calculation of handlebar distances and heights. This bike fits me perfectly. Well, almost, I had to make a few compromises because I couldn't afford the perfect stem.

The only thing left to do is grind off the cable and shifter mounts and have it powder coated. Also I'm going to fill in the bolt heads of the disc brake and stem with hot-melt glue to make it harder to steal those parts. Oh, the joys of the bike commuter life!

So much for the music blog. Sigh. I really am going to get more done musically now that the bike's finished. Honest.

2005-12-31T14:11:00.000+11:00

I'm unlikely to leave behind great art that is remembered through the ages.
I won't make a breakthrough that will ease the suffering of multitudes.
I won't further our understanding of the world and our place in it.
I hope to be remembered, for the brief time I'm remembered at all, as a good man. One who did his best regardless of the situation, but even that isn't working out so well of late.

A bad day yesterday and now Melancholy has once again got me by the throat and her sister Melodrama is putting the boots to me.

This passes, it always does. But in the meantime I whirl around the vortex of my own navel. That tidal spiral that denies the outside world and threatens krakens and sea changes at it's core. Never mind that it's all in my head. Never mind that the world is as beautiful and bountiful and blessed as it ever was, I can't see it. Or more accurately: I can't feel it.

Outside looking in. Surrounded by meters of glass. Immersed in heavy water. Pick your metaphores, mix liberally and swallow it straight, no chaser. I've tried to explain what depression feels like to those who've never felt it. I've failed. Repeatedly. And in my better times I'm glad that those who don't get it, really don't get it. In times like these however I wish for the science fiction gizmo that allows others to feel what you're feeling. Just for the briefest of instances, so that I'm not left with the falibility of words to convey something so slippery and personal.

Ah fuck it. I'll get a good night's sleep tonight and tomorrow I'll delete this. If it isn't documented it never happened. Right?

The Riddim of Fear

2005-12-01T18:03:00.000+11:00

I live in fear.

Dramatic statement huh? Verges on the melodramatic even. It's true however. I'm always worrying about something and unfortunately this world contains plenty of real things to worry about.

I had a childhood filled with fear and anxiety. From the neighbour kid who terrorized me to my father the alcoholic, there was little safety in my young world. In a sense I've been programmed to worry.

This is the sort of thing that adults are suppose to "just get over". I've heard that too many times to bother counting. As a grown-up somehow the insecurities are suppose to magically go away. Or so many people imply. Apparently acknowledging them is "whining" and makes you less of man.

Everyone has fears and insecurities, even the most well adjusted of folks. The difference lies in how well you cope with them, and well, sometimes I don't cope at all.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a coward in the strict sense. I've been robbed five times at knife-point and the last time I hit the guy with a piece of pipe and chased him out of the store. The other day at work I spotted a guy who, many years ago, assaulted me. Got convicted of it even. I stepped right up and kicked him out, even though the last time we'd stood eye to eye he had his forearm across my throat and his fist over my face.

And yet I fear. Constantly and systemically.

In music this has led to not trying. I'm not sure what outcome I fear if I really put an effort into it. I'm unlikely to get gunned down in a rap war; the worst that could happen is no one would like it.

This is the nature of the fear. It's illogical and unwarranted. It floats inside my head looking for something to justify it. I can rationally see what's happening but that doesn't help. Emotions are the stronger force, they work at a level that comes before conscious thought.

I wonder if this shows in my playing. In recordings I always feel like I sound tentative. I'm not the most objective observer though, but surely it must be there. It's such a part of me that in one way or another it informs everything else I do.

So once again the theme: "What the hell do I do about this?" and the familiar slapback echo: "Fucked if I know." are the riddim of my life.

Run!

2005-11-29T16:34:00.000+11:00

Last night I dreamt that a large group of people and I were being hunted. One by one we were being killed and only I knew how to stop it. I kept screaming "You have to create! It's the only good humans do." Creating will save us, huh? I might not be consciously worried about my current lack of musical endeavourers, but hoo boy my sub-conscious pissed off. For some reason I find this deeply funny.

Tidal

2005-11-25T13:07:00.000+11:00

My days are filled with work, work, more work and the occasional bit of eating, sleeping and snuggling. I bought the new Metric album and it's been sitting, unopened, for weeks now. Life has gotten in the way of music.

This isn't the first time this has happened and it won't be the last. What I'm really worried about is how not worried I am. I mean, I'm supposed to love making music, right? Why am I not getting uptight about having no time to do it?

I've got another creative project on the go and that keeps the anxiety somewhat at bay. I'm building a fixed gear bicycle. My life has two points around which it ellipses, music and bicycles. Right now I'm swinging closer to the bike one because of the second job. With the coming of real winter that job will diminish to a few hours a week. I'm hoping at that point I'll pick up where I left off and finish the damn song that's sitting on the hard drive.

I guess like everything else, my desire to make music goes through ebbs and flows and right now it's ebbing. On the plus side, sometimes when I break out of the doldrums my playing improves rapidly. That'd be nice, I feel like I've not improved much since I recovered from the broken arm.

Enough whining and poorly constructed oceanic metaphors!

*The picture is the frame I'm using to build the fixy. I found it abandoned in the middle of a street late one night. I'm calling it Lonely because it's going to be single speed.

Notice

2005-11-12T15:32:00.000+11:00

THE E LEVATORS S eamy Y ellow U nderbelly (Independent)
Two songs, both clocking in at under two-and-a-half minutes, both instrumental garage-band takedowns of familiar numbers. It's hard to say which one is more appealing--the speedy, surf punk wind up of that old Sesame Street sing-a-long classic, "R ubber
D uckie," or the slightly ridiculous lurch through "F rankie and
J ohnny." Probably the most conceptually-perfect EP you'll hear all year.

T om M urray
From See Magazine (a free weekly arts paper)

Hmmp. I think that while F + J is slightly ridiculous but it might not seem so if it'd been mixed properly. The point of the tune is to show off E's drumming but she's too quiet in the mix. I'm not sure how conceptually perfect the thing is, although the cover art is brilliant. P has a knack for that stuff, but how can it be conceptually perfect when we really didn't have a concept?

Ah well, it's not for sale and we don't have any gigs lined up so the review is purely for our enjoyment, and truth be told: it did give me a little thrill. Oh and in the interests of full disclosure: Tom is an old friend.

If anyone has the slightest interest I'll mail you a free copy, assuming I can pry one out of P's clutching hands.

Halloween

2005-11-01T12:24:00.000+11:00

We played the second of our two annual gigs on Saturday. The Halloween bash at the practice space. It went well, we played damn fine if I do say so myself. We're not a compelling band to watch, a bunch of finger gazers and nary a rock-star among us. That said it was a good time and I think people enjoyed it.

It's too bad in the one picture that my glasses have slid down and my mouth is hanging open. I'd wired the sunglasses to my prescription ones and getting them off mid set wasn't in the cards. The picture is me trying desperately to see the dots on the neck of my guitar.

The other picture is me and the fabulous E, drummer extraordinaire. Our band theme was Lounge Act from Garagistan: "We come to your country to play your women and marry your rock and roll!"

Musing

2005-10-11T15:25:00.000+10:00

I just finished playing a little improvised nocturne for the LUC. She was complaining that I never play guitar for her anymore. It's true, there's just not enough time or energy of late. Even my calluses are starting to get a bit thin. Because I was a bit of jerk to her yesterday I pulled out my concert classical guitar and lullabyed an apology.

Just a simple ditty in A minor but, well, it was beautiful. I have no evidence but how I feel; she fell asleep not 3 phrases in. (Not unusual that, I take no offence.) It was one of those moments where my brain was a step ahead of my hands. I'd think "how about a triplet in E minor for colour." and it would happen. No muss, no fuss just a flow of music from..... somewhere. It felt more like pouring clear water from a glass jug than playing guitar. Just direct the stream and it sparkles in the light through no craft of my own.

A guitar, a sleeping love and a momentary connection to music of the spheres, I'm a lucky man.

Help.

2005-09-07T13:36:00.000+10:00

I'm keeping this post on top for until the project is over, look below for new posts.

Have you donated to one of the major relief organizations helping out the poor folk down New Orleans way? Still feeling like you've not done enough or that it was all too impersonal and what did your money get used for anyway?

Go here: http://katrinakidsrelief.blogspot.com/

This is one person's direct action to help out with children affected by Katrina. She has decided to address a need not covered by anyone else and that is some good outside-the-box thinkin'.

Increasing

2005-09-06T15:24:00.000+10:00

I haven't been watching a lot of tv now that the Tour de France is over and I've taken a second job, but I caught part of a VH1 special last week. It was a re-broadcast for the Canadian market of the Storytellers series, the episode featuring Bruce Springsteen.

Being a devotee of punk during the eighties I never gave the Boss much time. I knew that he was well thought of as a songwriter but that was about all I knew, despite hearing Born in the U.S.A. round about a thousand times too many.

On the show he was playing songs and explaining his intentions with the lyrics. It was eye, er, ear opening. It was obvious that he'd put a lot of thought into it all, at least after the fact. The emotional subtext stuff he was talking about apparently wasn't a conscious thing when writing the tune, but he claimed he'd felt every last bit of it even at the time.

A couple of days later I watched K.D. Lang performing the Leonard Cohen tune Hallelujah on live tv. It was jawdropping, literally. By the time she was done my mouth was dry because it was hanging open. The depth of emotion she presented was amazing. If it was acting, the woman deserves an Oscar.

I was much more aware of Ms. Lang because of the Cowpunk stuff she'd done with the Reclines. But I had no idea she'd developed into such a singer. Ok, I kinda knew because my Mum had played this tune for me last time I visited. For some reason the artist didn't register, although I was impressed by the song. But I digress.

All of this made me realize something. Something that I've been trying to get at since the CBC interview the band. Why do I do this music thing? I've given lots of reasons for that and now I realize there's yet another. Perhaps the most important one.

Music is emotion, or more accurately a means to convey emotion. But it's more than that, it's a means to repeat emotions. Some songs are evocative every time you hear them and, provided you don't over expose yourself, they will continue to be evocative until your personality changes. Here's the part that stunned me when I realized it: this is true for the performers too.

The ability to inhabit a song, to feel the emotions it's trying to convey while performing it is one of the most important aspects of performance, it's what separates art from pop. I've known this for a long time, but my little tv excursion last week showed me another aspect to it. If the song is true and meaningful to the performer then that performer can experience those emotions at will. Just sing the song and there it is.

This is a skill of course and perhaps not an easy one. But it does explain the addictive nature of music making. Unless you've studied Method Acting or are very in touch with your emotions it's very hard to simply make one's self feel a certain way. I can't do it. As an intermittent sufferer of depression ( the clinical kind) I'd give anything to be able to feel happy at will. And perhaps I can.

There's a couple of tunes the band does where I feel the same way every time we play them, this despite being an instrumental act. One of which (E cho B each) fills me with eager anticipation every time we play it. I take a solo 3/4 of the way through and I have to fight the temptation to rush to get to it. When it goes well I get goose bumps, literally. Some effort and practice and this emotional connection could be a more conscious part of my musical experience.

I've said before that I can't quit music until I've written something profoundly joyful. Everything I've done (more accurately, half done) to date has been sad, angry or both. I'm pretty sure I need to get that out of my system before I can move on to joy so I'm not too fussed about it. The potential for joy is within me, as it is for everyone. If I can get it out into song form I should be able to experience it over and over. A selfish goal perhaps, but one I'm willing to keep working on until it I reach it. Maybe not too selfish, if I really do achieve a means of feeling joyful at will, yah think I'm going to keep it to myself?

Shared pain is lessened and shared joy is increased. About time I started increasing stuff in the world.

What the....?

2005-08-24T16:58:00.000+10:00

I got 43 hits yesterday. I normally don't get that many in a week. Most of them were referred from other blogspot pages that have no link or reference to me. Very curious, it can't be because I used the word poop in the last post can it? Anyone care to enlighten me as to how they got here?

Thanks.

Context (Warning: frank talk about bodily functions below)

2005-08-24T09:27:00.000+10:00

The hike in the Rockies was a treat. Well, a treat that came with a great deal of effort, some bowel problems and bit of pain. OK, a lot of pain, I'm not as young as I like to think I am.

It was three days of wilderness camping in bear country. Hoisting your food up 15 meter poles at night, no smelly soaps or deodorants in the tent, that kind of camping. Along with the mild danger there were spectacular views and the satisfaction of hard physical effort.

The highlight/lowlight was climbing a feature called The Notch. It's the highest elevation on the Skyline Trail. I'm not sure how many vertical meters it was but it was pretty intimidating looking at it from the bottom. I was first to the top. Not out of my usual macho sense of competition but because I needed to get away from the group.

I'd been having some bowl discomfort for an hour or two before The Notch. A bunch of years ago I was treated for Ulcerative Colitis. Basically a bad inflammation of the bowls. The treatment of non-steroid anti-inflammatories worked and my doctor felt that it wasn't likely to re-occur. Mind you everything I've read says it will come back, but I choose to believe my doctor. I still have some issues with my poop. Occasionally I just have to go, and go now, or I'm going to do it in my undies. That's how I was feeling staring up at this cliff face and wondering just were is the trail up at the top?

I took off first in the hope I could get over the ridge before everyone and poop in privacy. I made it but the climb was hard. Towards the top I was walking ten or so steps and stopping for a few seconds to let the lactate acid clear from my legs, then another ten steps, the way real climbers do in the high mountains. All the cycling paid off as I never even came close to being totally out of breath, but there's no way I could have gone any faster. My muscles just aren't in shape for walking, especially not when carrying a pack full of food, tent, cloths, water etc.

Over the top of the ridge was a truly unbelievable view. High mountains lining off into the distance, deep valleys, bright blue/green glacial lakes: awe inspiring. Unfortunately I wasn't in any position to appreciate it. No, the position I was in was squatting over a hole I'd dug with the heel of my boot.

Never has there been a more spectacular setting for a poop, but just I couldn't appreciate it. I was too busy with a basic bodily function gone bad and chasing pieces of used toilet paper as they blew up the hill in the 40kmh wind. Yah, fun.

As everyone else crested the ridge there was tired celebration and some oohing and ahhing. That got me thinking about context. For them the context was putting the worst climb of the hike behind them and being rewarded for it with a postcard-worthy view. For me it was much more internal, literally.

Another example of context confusion came later that day. We were on the decent towards the camp for that evening. One of the six of us (J) had never done anything like this before. We were all worried about her, could she do it? She often fell behind but never gave up and never lost her spirit. It was pretty interesting to watch her bounce back from such an unaccustomed effort.

One of the ways she kept her spirits up was to play tunes from here mp3 player on a tiny sound system. At one point there were three of us (not me) dancing down the side of the mountain to the sound of YMCA. It was funny and annoying at the same time.

I don't like listening to canned music in the wilderness. That kind of music is a product of civilization, of the city. I go to the mountains to get away from that kind of thing. I'd rather hear a strident bear bell and the crunching of boots on gravel than even music that I love. For me the context of the mountains in entirely wrong for that. Of course for them it was entirely appropriate. It got J through some of the harder moments of the hike.

The context in which music is heard makes a difference in how it's perceived. I not much of a fan of jazz, specifically hard bop. I can appreciate the skill of the players, but listening to it while sitting at home in a well lit room on a comfy chair just doesn't seem right. When I've seen it played live in a dark, smoky club, watching the musicians sweat as they work, well, that's exciting. Context.

I watched a friend's band play some kind of union benefit a bunch of years ago. They played the usual socialist kinda rock and roll, all very socially conscious. One of the songs was about how the rich were bad. It rubbed me the wrong way. The lead singer/guitarist was a white guy in his fifties. He was well dressed, had a neat hair cut and was playing a guitar that I would have killed to be able to afford. His amp rig was just as impressive. This was prime quality gear that a poor person couldn't afford.

Watching him sing that song left a bad taste in my mouth. I was thinking, "Yah, right buddy." and basically dismissed him as a hypocrite. Turns out I was wrong. My friend in the band told me after that he wasn't in fact rich. He'd just made the choice to spend his money on good gear and sacrificed much else to do so. But there it was, the context in which the song was presented didn't work. At least for me it didn't.

I have no idea what he could have done about it. It shouldn't matter what the performer looks like and yet it does. It shouldn't matter where you hear a song and yet it does. I like to think a truly great song will stand out, shine and move people regardless of how and where they hear it. I'm not sure most people are wired for that.

Most of us inhabit a world that encompasses all of our senses. Just because you're listening to music doesn't mean you stop smelling things. Sure, when you're concentrating the other senses take a back seat, but they're still there. I haven't the faintest idea what to do about this.

At the level I and all my musician friends are at there's no control over the venue. We can't control the context in which our music is presented. You take the gig you can get and hope for the best. You certainly can't control the situation in which someone listens to the radio or plays a CD. Mind you that's true even for the most successful musicans.

I guess the right context differs for everyone and it isn't something I should worry about. You can't make an experience perfect for everyone. Pesky people, all being different and all.

And yet I do worry about it. I want people to have that transcendent experience of the perfect song at the perfect moment. I want to bring that kind of joy to the world. Less altruistically, I don't want to put a lot of effort into creating something and have it sabotaged by things I have no control over. I don't want people to be looking at a view that has enough beauty to stun the rational centers of the mind into silence and have them miss it because they're worrying about shitting on their shirt tail.

Ah well, I've yet to write anything with that level of art so I guess it's a moot point.

I hurt

2005-08-23T14:36:00.000+10:00

The LUC and I hiked the Skyline Trail in Jasper National Park over the weekend. 45km carrying way too much stuff uphill. Sleeping, eating and excreting in the woods.

Vitamin "I" * and the good feeling you get from getting completely away from your normal routine are the only things keeping me going right now.

Despite playing my backpack guitar only once it was a good musical experience. Back to work, more later.

*Ibuprofen

Place Holding

2005-08-11T09:40:00.000+10:00

To those of you who come here so faithfully (all three of you) I will be writting more soon. The extra job has been eating up all of my time, but it's giving me time to think. A bad thing that, too much time to think, it leads to all sorts weird humours and vexations.

In the meantime, go create. Every action is an act of art if done with intention. The world is a big place, it can always use more beauty.

Tah.

The Wheels on the Bike Go Round and Round...

2005-07-27T10:00:00.000+10:00

...or at least they do when I'm doing my job. Got a part time evening job wrenchin' and representin' for these fine folks. It's fun and challenging, mostly because the bikes are old and need a lot of care.

It's cutting into my practice time, but oddly I think it's going to help me be a better musician in the end. I'm learning just how much free time I really have and how much I can do with it if I stay focused. That's always been a problem for me: too much slacking.

The plan is to use this part time job to get used to being more productive. So when I leave it I'll be able to spend at least the same amount of time working on music. That's the theory anyway.

In the meantime I get paid to ride around and work on bikes, things I do for fun. Sweet.

Sharp. Really sharp.

2005-07-16T13:37:00.000+10:00

I was just skimming a book on Jackson Pollack and it re-awakened my desire to be on the cutting edge. Unfortunately that edge is a long way from where I stand. Not like the fab D-Ray, she's so on it that I doubt she ever needs to shave her legs. Oh, and yes that is an accordion and no, it doesn't suck. You ain't never heard sounds like the ones she gets (wrangles, manipulates, outright-pillages) outta that thing!

Posture and Philosophy

2005-07-04T11:18:00.000+10:00

We played the bikefest last weekend. Our first gig in at least a year. The whole band was a bit trepidatious; we haven't practiced much in the last couple of months. Half way through the first song there was a noticeable change in mood. It was like we all realized at the same time that: "Yes, we know how to do this!" Not only was it more fun than monkeys wearing pants, but we played better than we've done in a long, long time.

So much of music is in the brain. Assuming you've spent the time getting your hands to obey orders, a good performance comes down to attitude and mindset.

I've been practicing standing up straight. I've had bad posture since my early teens and I used to suffer terrible back spasms. None of the myriad advice I was given worked, possibly 'cause most of it didn't make sense. I mean, how exactly does pretending there's a balloon attached to your head help? I felt like I should be ducking in doorways and avoiding anyone with a lit cigarette.

The hardest part about standing up straight is remembering to do it. I have to force myself to remember when I'm taking a shower, washing dishes or playing guitar. It feels really strange, strange "down there" when I try and be more, er, erect whilst playing guitar. Something about that pelvic tilt stirs the Rock God in me. I want to stick out my tongue, put my foot up on the monitor and make the girls scream. Fortunately the ironic/sarcastic portions of my brain are overdeveloped. There's little possibility I'm going to make an ass of myself by rocking out too much. In fact other than bobbing my head there's little moving I'm going to do at all. The curse of Classical training.

I'm going to have to learn to move around a bit if we're going to gig more, and that is the plan. Or so I'm told. Play a few gigs and use the money to record in some guys livingroom studio. Sounds good to me, I'm tired of trying to make P happy with the recordings I've been doing.

The other thing I've been thinking about is philosophy. Specifically the nature of reality. Seems like I'm surrounded by new-age hippy types, all of whom are trying to convince themselves that they're more powerful than they actually are.

There's nothing wrong with self improvement and there's certainly nothing wrong with valuing one's self, but there are limits. When you start to believe that the whole universe is subject to your will, that's when you lose me. We certainly create our own circumstances by the actions we choose, but reality as a whole? No way.

To believe that would be to deny those great moments of community that happen when playing with the band. Those moments when the group rises above the sum of it's parts, when things go goosebumpy in the night. Moments like we had halfway through R ubber D uckie last weekend.
If I create the universe out of whole-cloth then everything I around me is, well, me. The others in the band couldn't be separate entities that I've managed to achieve a fleeting and wondrous connection with. At best they'd be parts of myself that I was unaware of. A worthy goal I suppose, meeting the hidden parts of ones psyche, but in this case I refuse to believe that's what's happening.

My universe is inhabited by more than just me. And I don't mean light-beings, spirit-guides or pod-people. (Well, I'm not entirely sure about the latter.) No, my universe is full of humans: strange, wondrous, almost unfathomable in their thoughts and actions. I cherish those instances of connection that go deeper than day to day communication. Those moments, that for me, come from a band in full cry, eight hands speaking with one voice. Keep your crystals, chakras, signs and spaceships-behind-the-comet, humanity is mystery enough for me.

*That's me, hiding on the left. Yup, I wear my guitar really high, another curse from a Classical upbringing. Can yah say "Rawk God"? Hmmph, me neither.

Primal

2005-06-28T13:46:00.000+10:00

Been thinking a lot about exclusivity. We're had a minor flood last week. The big river was about 6 or 7 meters above it's normal level. Nothing too severe, there are a few houses with flooded basements but not many.

I live near the river and ride along it every day getting to and from work. There's always people about, especially on nice summer days, but never that many. The flood brought out the gawkers. Can't really blame them 'cause I've been gawking some myself. But they are annoying me. There's a little voice that complains every time I have to go around a group. One that says "You don't belong here." Primitive territorialism rearing it's hoary old head.

I've never felt this way about the music I've made, even when I was in a regularly gigging band. The few times I was confronted by a fan I felt embarrassed. For me, cause I never felt what we did was that great and for them cause why the hell would anyone waste their time listening to this crap for? Hey, I had self-esteem issues, er, well, "have" is the proper tense.

I wonder now if I should be more territorial, if that's a route to valuing what I do? I know I have it in me, over and above my current annoyance at the flood gawkers.

On our trip to Ireland the LUC and I attended a gala dinner/dance for the conference. She loves dancing and I do too, but I've never learned how to dance with someone. In my early 20's I spent one summer going to a nightclub every night, seven days a week. I was too shy to try and pick someone up and too poor to drink much so I spent a lot of time dancing by myself. I loved it. Dervish trance all the way. So the LUC and I get up to dance and she looks around smiling at everyone, everyone but me. Or so it seemed at the time. Lots of guys come up and talk to her, people she's met at the conference. Most of them don't know about me. A percentage of them, and not an insignificant percentage, have a little more on their mind than just saying "Hi". Nothing serious and no cause for alarm on my part, not really. But somehow I got really jealous. Not a proud moment. (I went for a walk, gave 10 euros to a homeless guy sleeping on the steps of a church and felt better about myself)

I lack these feelings in regards to music I've created. I don't share it with the world because I don't value what I do rather than wanting to possess it all for myself. It's in me somewhere, that "Me, Mine!" territorialism. I can see how that feeling, transferred to my creative work, could be motivating. Make me more likely to put something out, get over my apprehension. I kinda like the idea of my inner caveman bullying my inner-child; the whiney little git needs a good spanking. Or maybe some cookies and a nap, hmmm, nope that's my outer-adult that wants Bourbon Cremes and bit of a lie down...Tah.

Flummoxed, Flabbergasted and Flattered

2005-06-21T10:09:00.000+10:00

A couple of days ago the fabulous Jett Superior wrote a post triggered by something I wrote. Wow. Hell, calling it a post is to do it a dis-service, it was nothing less than a rhapsody. I take no credit for it, but am overjoyed to have provided a spark for one of my fav bloggers. For those of you who didn't get here through the link in her post: go now, read her work, savour the verbal fireworks, humour, irreverence and honesty that is the Superior way.

Noisy Old World

2005-06-11T15:10:00.000+10:00

Well, I'm back. The trip was a long one. Well, it was only three weeks but we did so much that it seemed longer. I'm too tired to write anything coherent, in fact I'm barely able to type. Jet lag is such a first world problem that I can't complain about it. Or at least I can't complain about it without feeling a twinge of guilt. The vast majority of humanity never gets farther than 50 miles from home in their whole life. Here I am, having just flown back from across the Atlantic having had the opportunity to explore another country and I'm going to whinge about being a little tired? OK, I am but...well...there's the twinge.

[The next morning]

Ah, that's better, nothing like a good sleep in your own bed.

So, on to the music. I spent some time considering the musical nature of transportation. Things in motion have a rhythm almost by default. But where is that rhythm in a plane? It's not like a train clacking over the tracks, the deep throb of a ship or even the swaying of a bus. All there is is a hiss. Very un-musical. But after too many hours in the air, bored of my book, uninterested in the movie and with the LUC asleep, I noticed something. That hiss had harmony.

It was composed of three distinct parts. One very high frequency hiss, another a bit lower, not more than an octave or two and a much lower frequency roar. I'm guessing that they were caused by, from top down, the plane's air pressurizing system forcing air into the cabin, the wind of our passage against the fuselage and the engine noise vibrating the whole plane. My ears aren't good enough to tell what the actual harmonic relationship was, but any two notes sounding at the same time is harmony regardless of their relationship.

The jet age, it's all about speed baby. It's certainly not about comfort or beauty. The clip clop of horse hooves brings a smile to most, it's almost restful. The clickity clack of trains is a well know sound of romance as are those made by big ships These are human sounds, despite their mechanical (or equine) sources. Their frequencies are within the range of human heart beats and that makes them comfortable. The noise of a plane is pure industrial. It's frequencies are so fast that it becomes a hiss and a roar. It's not on a human scale. Despite that, it is musical.

The harmony of an airliner is one unending chord. It speaks of speed and efficiency but it also speaks of life. The environment outside a plane at cruising altitude is deadly. If any of the three sounds were to stop you'd be in a world of trouble. Heartbreaking pictures on the nightly news kinda trouble.

In the end all sound is life, that's what the plane was whispering to me in it's un-aesthetic way. Everything we hear is created by life or in some way necessary for life. Coughs, snores and sniffles. Barks, howls and chirps. The neighbour's lawn mower, a passing car, a distant siren. These are all obvious sounds of life. But so too are storm winds tearing up trees and houses. It's the sound of the world's lungs at work. Thunder on a summer's night promises life giving rain. The roar of a forest fire is the sound of old growth giving way to new.

Life, it's everywhere and it won't shut up: music universal and unending.

Holidays

2005-05-31T03:45:00.000+10:00

I'm on holidays, in fact I'm in Dublin. Great trip so far.

Musically, I've discovered that airplanes do indeed make music, albeit very monotonously and that an Irish crowd has a different sound than a Canadian one. Still haven't heard any live indigenous music, but then it all seems a little touristy when we find it.

Tah for now.

Falling

2005-05-07T12:22:00.000+10:00

Last night I crashed my road bike. I made it through the entire winter commuting on my mountain bike only to crash on the driest, sunniest spring day we've had this year.

No serious damage although I am hobbling around with a huge bruise on my thigh. I did however hit my head. The LUC was quite concerned in that exasperated way women get when their menfolk do something asinine. You know, pronouncing your name with three distinct syllables even though it only has two.

To all 3 or so people a day who end up here: If you ride a bicycle, WEAR A HELMET.

I hit my head hard enough to see stars, if I hadn't been wearing a helmet I'd have been seriously injured. This is only the second time in around 20 years of bike commuting that I've hit my head hard. The first time I wasn't wearing a helmet and I lost consciousness for a minute or two. No fun, it ain't like the movies it takes a long time to recover. Since then I've probably spent $400 or so on helmets. The sound my head made when it hit made me realize that every penny spent was well worth it. I'm not even resenting the need to replace the helmet I only bought last fall.

No helmet=no brain it's a literal equation.

I really have been no-brained in general this last little while. I have been managing to practice a fair bit but that's about it. Yesterday, for the first time in months, I listened to the tune I've been working on. Man it sounded good. It might be the blow to the head or the pain-killers but I really thought I was on to something. So maybe the doldrums are over? Or maybe I'm about to expire from a concussion, either way things are changing.

Hey you.

2005-05-05T12:32:00.000+10:00

To the person who found this site by Googling "Is it too late to start classical guitar at 17?":

No it's not!

Yes it's easier to learn things when you're so young that everything you do is a learning experience, but that's not the whole story. Passion, enthusiasm and focus are easier at an older age. At 17 I suspect that passion, obsession even, is something you understand completely. Where a child might work at something because it captures their quicksilver interest for while or because Mom told them to, teenagers will focus to point of exclusion of everything else. And that's what it takes to become an expert.

Another thing to consider: while tiny guitars exist for very young students most people can't really learn to play until they've settled into the body they're going to have the rest of their life. At 17 you could still have a growing to do but you're closer to your final size than a 10 year old is.

If you read the bios of the Yngvie Malmsteens, Eddie Van Halens and Steve Vais of this world, (you know: guitar heroes) you'll find that most of them spent the better part of their teen years sitting in a bedroom practicing. There's no reason that this wouldn't work for classical too.

I think it's a shame that the Classical world focuses on prodigies so much. It creates an unrealistic impression of who can and can't play classical music. Just because you weren't playing Bach Suites at 3 months old doesn't mean you don't have something to offer. If more people who grew up outside of the Classical music world would take up playing it, then maybe we'd have more interesting interpretations of the repertoire. I'd love to hear someone who hung with Dad on the construction site as a wee tyke play Stravinski, or someone who's childhood passion was ice skating play Debussy.

Yet another thing to consider: Classical musicians can have careers that last until they die. The ageism that is so prevalent in pop and rock music simply doesn't exist. So why is there this emphasis on young prodigies? Craziness I say.

There we go, my 2¢ worth. [steps off soap box]

Forks

2005-04-27T14:06:00.000+10:00

Have you ever wondered "what if?" . What if I hadn't moved to another city? What if I hadn't sent that email? What if I said "No" rather than "Yes"? Almost everyone indulges in this game, we're speculative beasts by nature.

One of the things I like about music is that the "what if" game is played out on such a small scale. This is especially true in improvised music, but there are still plenty of places in composed stuff where you have to make choices. I love the way you get to try again in music. All it takes is "Hey, guys. My solo sucked, could we do that again?" and you get a do-over. Well, in rehersal anyway, gigs are another matter.

I wish life had that facility, the equivalent of band rehersal. A way of experimenting without reprecussions. Not that I'm dissatisfied with my life, I've got it pretty good. But I'm intensly curious and the "what-if's" drive me crazy.

Maybe my desire to make music stems from this? Maybe I need a microcosim where I get to safely explore possibilites? Maybe I'm a real-world coward. Hmmph, or maybe I'm just not getting enough sleep.

Still down*...

2005-04-14T12:28:00.000+10:00

...in so many ways, but at least the home computer is working again. (He says, blogging at work)

So how do you stay motivated?** I haven't cared enough to work on anything in the last little while. Blogs, guitar, personal hygiene, it all seems so pointless. Never mind all the good reasons I've given for doing music, I'm in a slump and can't find my motivation.

*Another mild bout of depression, nothing new, nothing interesting, nothing even to be concerned about, just have to ride it out. Thank God for bad tv and good books: self medication at it's finest.

**This isn't intended to be a rhetorical question even though my recent absence from these here internets does kinda make it rhetorical. Maybe some mis-spelling living-fossil fish lovin' researcher will have the answer. So....do ya?

Grrrrr Pt.

2005-03-12T13:35:00.000+11:00

Turns out that the great computer crash isn't entirely my fault. Some kind of killer worm was eating its binary guts out. We won't talk about where the worm came from, a gentleman doesn't kiss and blog.

Grrrrrrr!

2005-03-09T06:25:00.000+11:00

Home computer is in the shop, and it was my fault it ended up there. Not comfortable blogging at work. May I say grrrrrrr?

Excuses, Excuses

2005-02-22T14:29:00.000+11:00

The recent technical difficulties seem to be under control. Computers bah!

As far as I know, no one heard the broadcast. Not even my mother. Hell, despite setting my alarm I didn't hear it. I assumed that 3am Vancouver broadcast time would be 4am my time, surprise! Caught the last five minutes. Ah well, not in it for the fame.

I did learn a lot from M when he helped with our recording. Some very basic things that I was doing wrong. (note to self, gear from Radio Shack is never a good idea) I'd say we're 2/3 of the way through getting a decent 3 song demo. Demo for what exactly still remains a mystery. But hey, life is mysterious isn't it?

As soon as I get some time I'll write the next installment of "What the Hell Was I Thinking..." in which I damage my hearing and quite possibility my ability to father children.