notes on ideas

When i was in my first band and second band, i spent a lot of my life and energy and tooth enamel for that matter putting up posters for shows thinking that this huge effort was in some way worthwhile. I was trying to send a message, or like that big shift in a hockey game where you gave your team momentum with a hard fore-check... it doesn't transfer well in band situations. In a band usually everybody is insane in their own particular way and time and mis-assigned intentions grind the bastard down to useless powder

I was actually giving a lecture about the topic at a club the other night to anybody who would listen... but the scientist must now ask "what is it now that sucks my time and energy in a non constructive way?". The obvious answer being those insane maniac children of mine, but the "new postering" is the Internet. It's a better game because you are warm and dry and not fighting city workers and other poster people for real estate, and when your shit is up it stays up... notice the negative in "it stays up". A poster will evaporate in time but a link, bad video, drunken tirade can always come back to haunt you... unless you can rise above all of that and believe in:

"Cyril once observed that the only reason for writing was to create a masterpiece. But if you haven't got it in you to make a great work of art there is another option- you can become one."


-Solomon Gursky Was Here

Mordecai Richler

most folk don't have the proper training for that one... but I'm getting off topic again... my point was somewhere or somewhat to do with the reality that we always seem to kill our precious time in life doing things that don't matter. The plays change but the game is the same on some levels.

I don't know why i make music to be honest, i just do, i absolutely do NOT want to be a "rock star" under any circumstances. And i honestly believe that i mean that. I have a desire to make money to buy freedom, and i feel good sharing opinions through song, and i love to just sit on a groove and feel it.

why am i awake writing this?

the experiment started for the same reason as the posters, but it was meant to add a human element to the dilemma. I remember "band meetings" where i tried to get the other members to come up with one 3 line poem per week to put on the site to give a more varied view of the band but no can do... in the end the whole site was called "my personal vanity site" by some.

you know the song "your so vain you probably thing this song is about you".. my dad always though that song was hilarious. My point being a blog (called the chronicles) should be about you. I'm just a guy in a band and this is how i see the world, and I'm going to be wrong and i might be right from time to time, but why fudge it to the trends.

the raw facts are it's 2:00 am and i need sleep

i should just delete this shithole, but lets let the truth ring for good or ill.

I just punched back a few more episodes of "The Wire" and then down for a night of blogging, or is it a morning of blogging. After hanging with 3 kids all day a man can really get into a little of the old AM silence if you know what i mean. Probably not actually, because most of the sissies (no offense) with kids my age are sleeping away worried about what tomorrow might bring... my attitude (for some reason i use to always try to put "additute" but the spell check finally straightened me out... who said you can't teach an old dog new tricks). Anyhoo, which is not a word, by the way... my attitude is that tomorrow is going to happen anyway (if we are lucky).. he says as he hears a police or military helicopter go by.

In some ways it's a rather easy day tomorrow, i have a band coming to play the Super Robertson Supper Show, so all i have to do is either stay home, or show up and force the crowd to write a poem and then force the band to preform that said poem, which will be harder on them than on myself of course. I bet you old Mule is glad he is not on deck tomorrow night... Olympic security, band with set, lunatic with principle.

Principle is like values you have.
Principal is the guy in charge of your school.

I remember my mother telling me that your principal can be your "pal"... she was a primary school teacher. Sure as hell wasn't my pal. Principal's have no sense of humour, when it comes to practical jokes and their feelings for destruction of property are not aligned with my own...

I was a special kid in school... there were a few Principal's that saw something in me and tried to reach out and i always ended up disappointing.

It was the principal who encouraged me to be the only boy in "french club" and then when we sang that song at the assembly i pulled the curtain on us.

It was the principal who saw me as a "leader" for the band as my early trombone skills set a good pace, but then there were too many complaints from the clarinet section about kids getting bopped in the back of the head with the business end of the trombone "outer side", so then i got moved to percussion because i needed to hit things but the reins were too heavy and i snapped at the Christmas assembly in front of all of the parents and went for an ad-lib solo. My Pal showed such anger in those eyes and those lips... thin moustache quivering... sorry man,. I'm just a natural ass hole.

It's a lot of work watching television, or at least you can lose a lot of time that you could be doing something "productive". I have been watching a series that ran 5 seasons, mowing down a season a week, staying up late lying on a couch banging episode after episode... in some ways it beats wasting time on the internet and perhaps some down time is what i could use. It's sort of why i don't watch TV... I just have this obsessive way about things. On one hand i watch it on "my terms", meaning no commercials and not waiting week to week for an episode... the beauty of technology. But are My terms really watching TV all weekend? Doesn't sound like the kind of terms i would naturally subscribe to if we were like talking philosophy if you know what i mean.

It's been a strange week. On Monday i got a call from my sister telling me my Mother was in the hospital because she happened to be walking into a grocery store in the middle of a robbery and some dude ran out and bumped her out of the way, breaking her wrist and pelvis. My Mother is my fathers caregiver so you can do the math on that disaster, but it looks like things are being sorted accordingly.

It's the "incident" that some of us in the family have been worried about for some time. I have been trying to get my parents to scale back and get into a place more suited to their "changing lifestyle". I'm not meaning ship them into a "home" but rather find a place that's not a 3 level house with bedrooms and laundry and kitchen all on different floors. My parents, being resistant to change have laid out excuse after excuse and in the end i think the greatest respect one has to give somebody else is the right to live their life as they choose. So it was always "what if this happens?", with the logic following then "you won't have the choice", on the better to choose your destination. Still i do a lot of things i perhaps shouldn't (some might think), and i surly appreciate a stubborn self preservation attitude... it's what keeps people moving. I mean i probably wouldn't have made all of those records (or CD's) if people believed in me... i had to prove them wrong and the power to prove people wrong can be a mighty ally indeed.

where am i going with this?

i think it was a story in the book of Rumi where a farmer and his son live on a plot of land and some wild horses come onto the property and the neighbour says "that's good news" to which the man replies "we'll see", and then next day while trying to train the horses, the son is bucked off a horse and breaks his leg and the neighbour comes by and says "that bad news" and the man says "we'll see" and then the next day the king's men come around to collect all of the able bodied men to fight in a war in some far away land and the son can't go because he is lame and the neighbour says "that's good news"... you get the point.

Apparently my Mothers pelvis is actually fractured in a good place (for full recovery), so i guess I'm trying to put the best spin on this possible (with all of this philosophy talk). I am a man of faith although i have no use for religion personally, so from thousands of miles away i am trying to help my family find their way. Mom and i laugh on the phone, that's what I'm good for and in between chuckles i try to slide in some good options for the future.

One thing that pisses me off is going on to websites of "retirement" communities... may of them offer you a free gift to join in. To me that smells like shit. You are talking about your life and the most basic part of it your home, and no "free gift" will ever make that right. Then you start thinking about "management companies" and i recall my brief stint as Strata Council president "working" with the "Management company"... and in the end i ended up just cutting the fucking grass myself because it was just too damn stupid and expensive to get somebody else to tell somebody else to tell some pecker-head to cut the damn grass.

The crime aspect is weird and hard to swallow, but you can't change the past. Oddly enough years ago i was beaten on the streets for some reason I'll never know but it did give me a "timeout" and a chance to re-think the direction of my life and i look back at that as a positive moment. I remember they sent me to a psychiatrist to talk about it (being a victim of crime and all) and i laid that on him and he told me i was remarkable well adjusted.

here's hoping.