To thine own self be true

(a portion of the gym before the doors opened)

(ready to go; one buyer wanted to buy my shirt!)

(another view: ready to go)

Every year I travel to the nice Lion’s Centre on 11th Avenue to join my record-collecting brethren (their stock includes CDs, cassettes, books, shirts, and ephemera). The term “Elsewhere Community” derives from Hugh Kenner’s CBC Massey Lectures series. In his talk, Kenner describes how we often have a need for cultural stimulation that is encountered in a particular context much in the style of the old Grand Tours of Europe that North Americans used to go on to fulfill deep spiritual and cultural needs. So a significant cultural exchange context.

Much like The Stroll of Poets Society and the upcoming Edmonton Poetry Festival–two other Elsewhere Communities I am a part of– a whole host of aesthetic possibilities open up at the record collectors show. There, I network with familiar faces and prominent figures, as well as share accumulated information and wisdom about artists and recordings–something I can’t do at home or with my closest friends. One guy was surprised that Jimmie Rodgers (whom I’ve personally corresponded with–“Kisses Sweeter Than Wine”, “Honeycomb” was still alive); another that Miles Davis sat in the dark of a French movie studio spontaneously composing the soundtrack for Louis Malle’s Elevator to the Gallows).

At the same time, I continue to sell off my downsized audio collection which includes signed items, rare or scarce books and records–many from the spoken word genre (which makes me totally unique in Edmonton) as well as from my now greatly-reduced soundtrack collection.

Yesterday–the fall and spring events are always on Sundays–I spent from 8-4 setting up, showing and sharing, then taking down my display. I had many positive and unexpected moments connecting people with items they didn’t know were on my 8-foot table. One older lady was a devout Guess Who and Kinks fan. I was able to connect her also to a live Guess Who DVD, which she didn’t know existed.

Sometimes this also means deterring a sale as when I pointed out to the proud parents of their daughter protégé that the Bach album by Wendy Carlos was not on regular piano, but rather on Moog synthesizer! Hilariously, they ran for the hills in shock, disappointed the music was not what they had conventionally and limitedly presumed.

Another nice moment was when I dropped the price of a rare Cream live boxset for some keen Cream teens who had limited funds. They were totally ecstatic to walk away with their prize; it had made their day. Similarly, a young man who really wanted my rare Martian Chronicles LP, was short by $15 on the asking price; so I lowered the price and he was pleased as Punch to get something he really wanted with his limited funds just before closing time.

And at the end of the show yesterday, I gave my friend George–who organizes the show and who had a table behind me–a nice Tony Bennet book with a CD which he marvelled at. Such moments as those are precious; I often find that giving the right gift spontaneously to friends is one of the best expressions of gratitude for whatever.

Overall, it was another fantastic event with two TV networks around to do media coverage–the event is so highly-regarded, unique, and awesome. And exhausting as usual, too.

Yet so many special moments including a reconnect with a former Scona student who has done well for himself as a dj, the highly respected owner of Stony Plain Records (a signed item fan with a huge collection), and a new connection with Dave who collects soundtracks and will likely be interested in my next soundtrack downsize.

As Elsewhere Communities go, I can think of none much finer than the Edmonton Record Collectors Show. Kindred spirits, truly interesting folks, and priceless episodes.

“Most people would rather die than think and many of them do.”
–Bertrand Russell,

“After all, you can’t wear the feminist T-shirt at home and traffic with misogynists abroad.”
–quoted in excellent Rex Murphy column, National Post, April 16, 2015

Especially when, as Stephen Lewis put it, Saudi Arabia is “a regime steeped in misogyny” and Justin is selling arms to that country. Major hypocrisy amidst all the fashionable pc selfie-window-dressing.

Jackie Zinger, park ranger, Nahanni.
Her work can be seen on the Nahanni installment on the Frame cable channel.
A great love of Nature with the Poet’s Eye for spectacular presence shots.

“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter–to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther…And one fine morning–
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
–F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“I don’t think a poem comes from an idea. Walking is good for poetic inspiration. Something drops on your head. You get the first line, see something, and it gives you the last line: ‘Goodbye,’ said the river. ‘I’m going downstream.’

–Howard Nemerov

“Come here, child,” cried her father as she appeared. “I have sent for you on an affair of importance. I understand that Mr. Collins has made you an offer of marriage. Is it true?” Elizabeth replied that it was. “Very well–and this offer of marriage you have refused?”
“I have, sir.”
“Very well. We now come to the point. Your mother insists upon your accepting it. Is it not so, Mrs. Bennet?”
“Yes, or I will never see her again.”
“An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr.. Collins, and I will never see you again if you do.”
–from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice

The first two examples of pro-feminist positions that I encountered in my high school days, reading, and life.

Across from me in the waiting room this morning, a young woman with chartreuse hair and tattoos on her arm wearing a t-shirt that proclaimed “I HATE EVERYONE” in caps. I almost got up and went over to say “But I love you.”

I can’t get no respect, as Rodney Dangerfield used to say ad nauseam. This morning, a blueberry jumped out of the strainer in a bid to escape certain cereal death, yelling “Get away from me, you bastard. I want to live!”

Just now, I opened the door under the bathroom sink to throw an empty roll into the garbage. It bounced out, yelling the same thing as the blueberry before the door slammed closed. Escapees and rebels everywhere. Bad attitudes everywhere you look.

ps/ Hey, I’m not taking any of this personally, ya understand.

“I wish I could make you see how much fuller the life I offer you is than anything you have a conception of. I wish I could make you see how exciting the life of the spirit is and how rich in experience. It’s illimitable. It’s such a happy life. There’s only one thing like it, when you’re up in a plane by yourself, high, high, and only infinity surrounds you. You’re intoxicated by the boundless space. You feel such a sense of exhilaration that you wouldn’t exchange it for all the power and glory of the world.”
–To Isabel, his disappointed, conventional, rejected fiancé in The Razor’s Edge

Context and Process.

Every specific, moment, individual part or person can be perceived, understood, assessed, and appreciated as part of a greater whole or context. Indeed, if one wants to achieve any of these four things in any situation or setting, one has to think about and reflect on how disparate parts are part of a context. When one can imagine or conceive of the big picture, then all the specifics make more sense and one can even understand relationships and connections much better. That is BTW why knowing and studying history, culture, and psychology are so important. They provide us valuable, useful structures and frameworks for more comprehensive, accurate overviews and perspectives.

For the fact is that everyone and everything did not spring intact, separately, individually, from the world or from God (if one is religious). A baby is born to parents, who were themselves children of other adults, and so on. A child going to school is part of that school life as well as also part of a family or home base. We and everything are in one or many contexts in a single given moment..

Process is built into everyone and everything from the get-go of experience. A plant begins as a seed from which it ripens through stages, yielding a flower in summer, before declining in fall and winter. Some plants or flowers are reborn the next year and their process continues. But, generally, when something dies–and people, animals, birds are good examples–that marks the end of their process of life and living. (Though some believe that life process continues in some other form such as in spirit or through rebirth or reincarnation.) But always process is a series of stages which have a life and flow about it. Generally, process involves imagination, creation, attention, growth, change, and a sense of moving from A to B to C and so forth–that is, implied continuum and continuous process. If anything, process helps us to understand and cope with change and daily flow.

I think these two things put a lot of things and life into perspective. Through context, for example, one can come to a better understanding of how setting and historical times affect an individual’s choices and values. Through process, one can come to a better understanding of where any person, creature, or thing is within a life cycle. This is a view that both subsumes change and helps us to understand the importance of choice relative to flow, change, and ongoing process.