In Defense of February

Who else hates February? Valentine's Day? Punxatawny Phil? Seasonal Affective Disorder? Snow?

Yes. February sucks. Yes. It is evil and must be stopped. Yes. It is merely a bridge between the despair of January and my birthday. Yes. I hate that I'm a Pisces now and not an Aries. Yes. A ram is cooler than a fish. Yes. I'm way off topic.

Actually, Punxatawny Phil is adorable, like all God's ugly little critters. Snow is temporary, and SAD is intermittent; the Earth's northern hemisphere has been tilting towards the sun for a month and a half now, so the worst really is behind us. Perhaps most importantly, Valentine's Day is just an attempt to organize Spring Fever, and is therefore doomed to failure.

Also, February is the shortest month. Small price for a quick reminder of what life would be without summer (insert John Keats reference here).

Looking on the bright side. Must be the drugs. Or the recognition that life is all about choosing your consequences, and making peace with the negative aspects of getting through life. Or the recent increase in exposure to direct sunlight. Or my discovery that vegetables are edible. The other day I even realized (to my grating chagrin) that there are things about my day-job that I (skin-crawling) kind of like.

Something's messing with the Dark Side here, and I will seek it out.

Meantime, Happy Valentine's Day or whatever.

Who Had a Town & a Rapper Named After Him...

Here's a quote for you. See if you can guess who said it. This is kinda like one of those "You just voted for Hitler" things, but give it a shot anyway:

"I want everybody to feel the same love I feel."

Need a hint? It wasn't Jesus.

Here's one from a few years down the road: "How very much I have tried my best to give you a good life."

Need another one? He was unequivocally bat-shit crazy.

Here's another quote from him, just a few minutes later: "Come on people. Try to die with some dignity."

Give up?

Last clue (and this one's the giveaway): "Drink the fucking Kool-Aid."

Okay, that was paraphrased.

Quick history recap for anybody who doesn't know the story:

Jim Jones was a charismatic social justice leader from Indiana, who moved his whole "People's Temple" to Jonestown, Guyana in 1974. Rumors of physical, psychological and sexual abuse in the community spurred a congressional review, headed up by Congressman Leo Ryan, accompanied by a camera crew from NBC and Greg Robinson of the San Francisco Chronicle, as well as a handful of temple members' relatives.

On November 18th, 1978, Jones ordered the assassination of Congressman Ryan and his entire entourage; fearing the repercussions, he then organized the mass suicide of all his followers. The method? Cyanide-and-sedative-laced Kool-Aid.

Incidentally, his wife fought his security forces til the last of the community's children was dead; then she drank the Kool-Aid herself.

Before that, Jones spoke of love, peace & hope; of establishing an Earthly paradise. This attracted thousands of followers. He was praised by the likes of Rosalyn Carter and Harvey Milk. He even reached out to the Nation of Islam and - after a shaky start - found common ground. He fought for civil rights, and for peace & equality among racial groups. He was compared to Martin Luther King Jr and Albert Einstein by contemporaries. He was apparently every inch the Peacemaker everyone wanted.

Make no mistake; Jones' followers had no idea what they were getting into. They were people of principle and good intention. Maybe Jones was too; just lacked your basic run-of-the-mill sanity.

When Jones' body was examined, it was found that he was killed with a single gunshot wound to the head. It was not self-inflicted. His son later said "I think he could not bear the thought of going out the same way he was seeing everybody else go... and lacked the courage to do it himself."

He's just an extreme example of human frailty, really. There are other examples of this kind of frailty on even larger scales that have brought entire nations - even continents - to their collective knees... but those examples have been a little overused lately; I think you know the names already.

It's really hard to remain open to the innate goodness of humanity in the face of tragedies like this. Really easy to give up, let the jade cover your skin and simply survive the disaster we call The Human Condition. Yet somehow hope continues to grow in my life, seeing the good in the everyday work and play of people I know; people who make the world better in small ways, trusting the ripple effect. These aren't heroes the way we're used to celebrating heroes; they are the best kind.

But the next time you hear somebody talking about "Earthly Paradise" or "eliminating all society's ills" or whatever, I reckon the best advice is to run for your fucking life.

Where Are You From?

I get this question from time to time, and never know how to answer it.

Let's assume for now that the question is a purely geographic one. Even though it isn't.

Born in Toronto, didn't see it again for more than 20 years. The first 5 years of my life were spent bouncing from Toronto to Edmonton to Ottawa to Yellowknife to Iqaliut to Qikiqtarjuaq & back to Yellowknife. When I was 6, my folks settled in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories. We stayed there for 20 years. So if I'm from anywhere, it would be there.

Then again, while we were based in Fort Smith, I also went to school in Thorsby, Yellowknife, Rome and a small town about an hour out of Boston. Then moved back to Yellowknife.

After all that, I moved to Peterborough, Ontario. While I kept coming back there for about a decade, I was moving around again - to Iqaluit, Ottawa, Combermere, Toronto... You get the idea. Not exactly homebound. And while living in all those places, I was falling down all over North America too.

These days I'm in Toronto. After regaining my faith in education (bit of a story there, but for another time) I read through some audio school websites and picked one; it closed and kept my registration fee, so I picked another one, which led directly to having a great year with some of the coolest people in the field of audio and music (Steve Sauve, Trevor Marshall, Jeff Wright, Darius Szcepaniak, Eb Reinbergs & Teppei Kamei, to name a few). Guess I dodged a bullet with the first school.

A year later I was interning at Euphonic Sound with James Pew & Shawn Daley. Still working there in a kind of freelance capacity, with the crappy day-jorb to pay the bills. It's good, but I want to do more; "going pro" is a lot of unpaid work, and the whole shelter-and-sustenance thing really eats up a lot of time. But that is, again, another story.

So much for the obvious.

The point I'm getting to here is, "Where are you from?" is not just a geographic question. It can be an ideological, socio-political, gang-related (ask B Real), or spiritual question.

With the 14 years I've spent rambling around Ontario looking for my destination, a lot of things have changed inside me. The people I've met along the way have slowly knocked bits off me, and things have happened to me that really took me out of the well-lit prison of what my mind could include at the time.

Used to subscribe to a kind of conservatism I now loathe. Used to be a small-town kid, but now can't deal without a subway system and access to espresso. Used to be a devoutly religious guy with aspirations to the priesthood; the language of the liturgy doesn't speak to my understanding of God at all anymore. Used to dream about landing a fat record contract and effortlessly riding the beat to fame and fortune (dodged another bullet there too... who knew depression could be so useful?). Used to think music had all the answers...

Okay, that last part hasn't changed at all.

But the things that have changed me aren't just a part of me now; they're part of where I'm from too. If a thing is who you are, then it had to come from somewhere; and if it wasn't you 20 years ago, then it came from somewhere else. You could be from somewhere you've never physically been, so long as it's had a lasting effect on you.

Where are you from? Geographically I'm from Canada, and that's about as specific as it gets. In every other way I'm a result of the universe colliding with itself.

And so are you.

Another Dying Religion... Hopefully.

Warning: The following contains interpretation. If you're looking for fair and balanced presentation of bare & unbiased facts, you're barking up the wrong stump.

Good luck finding that shit too.

We're born into an economy. We are catechized with the principles of monetary balance. We are heavily encouraged not to figure out who we are, but how we're going to contribute to the economy... not the greater good, but the economy.

Regardless of how you were raised, the economy eventually becomes your family. Regardless of your religious or spiritual persuasion, the economy eventually takes the place of God. Regardless of your core sociopolitical principles, the economy will dictate your vote. No matter what your talents, desires, conscientious formation or most deeply-held convictions, the economy will determine how you will live.

Think about that for a second. Something is in a position to override that which makes you human - your will. The older you get, the more your decisions will be dominated by economic realities.

What the hell is the economy anyway? Who the hell does this economy think it is? Why should we allow our lives to be controlled by this weird, incorporeal entity? We can't see it, hear it, get to know it... It's actually worse than the gods described by Dawkins or Hitchens (i.e. non-existent & controlled by cynical elitists). I mean, at least you can designate some sort of personality to your god of choice; can't do that with an economy (unless you paint Reagan's face on it or whatever).

Can we reclaim our lives?

I will either succeed in this endeavor or die trying. I will likely die poor in this pursuit, if current circumstances are any indication. Doesn't matter. Rather live in the pursuit of freedom and die poor, than live under the illusion of wealth... and then die anyway.

It's an uphill fight too. I mean, I started late with the whole "know thyself" thing. Identifying the sources of one's biases is not easy, even if you get on it from day 1. And it gets worse. The more you remove the layers of indoctrination from your consciousness, the more you find caked on there. But what can you do? Run out the clock buried in illusion, or die in the unfinished process of realization.

So I guess this economy thing is just one more layer. And it's a thick one too. It's really the most basic function of our society, the single biggest obstacle to our ability to trust and help each other. Can't live with it, can't eat without it.

The threefold choice here is as obvious as it is unfortunate: Accept poverty & live outside the tent, accept illusion and waste your life in the pursuit of wealth, or go nuts and try to burn the whole sorry mess down, Fight-Club style. Kinda bleak, no?

For me, the only acceptable choice of these is the first... and it really isn't acceptable. I mean really. How can I accept poverty as the only mode of living? Poverty sucks.

There are days when a legitimate life of crime looks way more inviting. Know what I mean? Wouldn't you rather be the master of a cohort of wage-slaves? That's the way: Own your business, and then pay people as little as legally possible to run it for you. You get the profits, they do the work. Pay them enough to keep them alive, but little enough to keep them desperate to come back the next day.

Gotta leave it there. Time to get ready for work.

More on this as I try to understand it.

War Against the Pigeons

It's a perennial fight. They succeeded last year with the birth of their prince/princess, Francis (lack the intel to know for sure, hence the androgenous name). Been chasing them off the balcony ever since.

We can learn something from pigeons. They're weak, stupid and annoying. They are also tenacious as hell. No matter what measures are enacted to throw out of the home they have chosen, they persist in returning to rebuild their smashed home. Their persistence in the face of adversity would be inspiring, if not for the fact that they shit more than any two dogs.

More than persistence though, I reckon it's a weird combination of memory and forgetfulness that keeps them coming back. They remember where home is, but forget that it is also home to two angry bipeds and a carnivorous (and very territorial) cat. They remember only that this is the place where their son/daughter was born.

Without getting all political, this reminds me of a number of displaced cultural groups - not the bit about being weak, stupid and annoying, nor the bit about shitting a lot, but the rest of it.

Of course we're encroaching on their habitat. Let's not forget that they are also encroaching on OUR habitat. Who's to blame here? Clearly I was here before the pigeons were - both in terms of how many years we've been on this rock (2 for them, several more for me) and in terms of how long we've been living in this particular location (a year and a half for me, a year for them). Also, this habitat was built for humans, not pigeons.

Maybe Garfield was right about something: You must establish your territory, and then be prepared to defend it. Or was that Henry Kissinger? I have trouble telling the difference sometimes.

Singing, Pigs and the Job

I've had this Blogger account for about a year now & never posted once. Thought you needed something important to say. Having read a blog or a thousand since then, all I can say is... Boy is my face red.

...Moving on...

First time I wrote an autobiography I was 15. It was understandably short (that's what she said anyway) and vapid. Why argue with what works?

At work a couple weeks ago, I was singing under my breath and a lady at the counter said "Better not give up your day-job." Funny thing is, I work at night. What was she really saying?

Edie Brackell (spelling?) bugs the living Christ outta me. Can't put my finger on the exact reason. Perhaps it is the same reason that "some there are who cannot abide a gaping pig... others, when the bagpipe sings i'the nose, cannot contain their urine." All I know is, when Edie sings through her nose, I wanna stab people in the ears.

On a related note, I've started to question Paul Simon's wisdom.

I hate politics, but am inexorably drawn to it. Reminds me of my job.

Today is a day off from the job I hate. Nothing personal against the people there; by and large they're good folks, and the work keeps me out of trouble. Feels like a waste of life to be there is all. The job flies in the face of so much that I hold dear.... like money, for instance.

Good news though: I have another job... One that does not pay as much as my more acceptable, minimum-wage one, but one I enjoy infinitely more. I get to do that one today. See you at the studio.

Since brevity is the sole of wit (some asshole wrote a poem about that once), I'll end it there today. Til next time, remember: Arguing with corn-fat crackers is like trying to break up a fight between two pigs. You get mud all over you, and the pigs resent you for it.

Peace and Respect!