To thine own self be true

At Churchill Square
I saw him leaning back
on the park bench
as if he had all
the time in the world
lunchbox and thermos
beside him.
I asked him for
some spare change
but he didn’t say much.

……………………….

All along the process, those spontaneous personal choices to blend/merge into/with context, in order to play and create new possibilities.

“People take pictures of each other                                                                              Just to prove that they really existed”–Ray Davies, The Village Green Preservation Society by The Kinks

Also the many roles/performances we choose to play in our play/movie/story/poem of life.

Simple play is basic to life. As is the ability to laugh, particularly at ourselves.

Something here too about using juxtaposition to express irony and humor.

(CD signed Friday night by The Stampeders–guitar–Rich Dodson, drums–Kim Berly, bass–Ronnie King)

I’ll have to pack my things and go”
Or so the legendary Ray Charles declared on “Hit the Road Jack”, one of many great songs to be performed tonight at a sold-out Century Casino Showroom by the popular ’70s Canadian trio The Stampeders.

Show and catalogue include:

Devil You (the high-voiced intro typically)

Carry Me (their first hit–very folky, anticipating folk-rocky Blue Rodeo stylings some 2 decades before)

Minstrel Gypsy (nice folky ballad hit)

Marigold (a wild instrumental shades of The Ventures and Shadows with a touch of Al Caiola)

Ramona

Running Wild (interesting to see the original 3-man unit generate that much heavy rock in this one and the previous)

Hit the Road Jack (which used Wolfman Jack’s voice much as did Guess Who in “Clap for the Wolfman”)

Then Came the White Man (in time for the all the residential school presentations here these daze)

Playing in the Band (the repetitive wonky hip tune minus the sexy brass, of course)

Oh My Lady (their other ballad hit)

Sweet City Woman (the big international hit to kick off the ’70s with a banjo no less)

Wild Eyes (one of the great heavy rock anthems of all time–live; the extended version with drum solo)

New Orleans (with “Hit”, the other old retro hit really rocked)–*only one they didn’t do

Stand Up (a Kinks-style rocker)

Johnny Lightning (a Chuck Berry-guitared rocker)

I grew up in Winnipeg with The Guess Who, but once here in Alberta, found The Stampeders getting as much radio play with more songs heard on the radio well beyond the latter’s demise in 1975. The original threesome (guitar, bass, drums & 3 lead vocalists) reunited in the ’90s and continue to tour, mostly across Canada. They recently issued an amazingly good double CD live concert, in Moose Jaw of all places! Many of the cuts feature the group as a threesome sans extra guitar dubs, quite representative of their show and actual live sound.

…………………………………………

After/ Fantastic 2 hr. show. Older crowd, many dancing. Ronnie King (bass) switched to guitar for 4 songs which showcased his talents more. Amazing drum solo in “Wild Eyes”. Stuck around to meet them again. Told them they have three strong vocalists and that they were my favorite Canadian rock band (despite my growing up in Wpg. listening to The Guess Who). They certainly have had a longer career than the latter with more songs I care to listen to these daze. A wonderful way to end the week.     Next up–South Africa’s best–Johnny Clegg at the sold-out Festival Place again. Concert 6 of 6 in 2 musically live/ly fullish months.

Virginia Woolf writing about the greatest writers and greatest minds–

“If one is a man, still the woman part of the brain must have effect; and a woman must also have intercourse with the man in her. Coleridge perhaps meant this when he said that a great mind is androgynous. It is when this fusion takes place that the mind is fully fertilized and uses all its faculties. Perhaps a mind that is purely masculine cannot create, any more than a mind that is purely feminine. It is fatal to be a man or woman pure and simple: one must be woman-manly or man-womanly.”

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The first sentence’s unintentional humor and the limited view on ‘single-sex’ writers in the last two sentences aside, such a view nevertheless offers a perspective on sensibility relative to Shakespeare’s greatness, and on what might make other writers and minds truly great. In any case, a unique, interesting criterion when one is considering greatness.

I am all the things I am/A lot like you/I am all the things I am/And you.–“Return to Note”

Task Lighting by Klark (aka James Mireau) is a wonderful, impressive 1997 album by one of my former Strathcona Comp students. A very multi-talented, creative young man, James wrote all the material, did the vocals, performed most of the music, and produced this excellent album, a Limited First Run CD. Several exceptional songs are bona-fide classics which could have been top 10 numbers on many hit parades: “Chebucto Head”, “Return to Note”, “Garneau”, “Twenty Mirrors”, “Heart Down Low”, “Ethane”, and “The Straight Line”. Herein, a wonderful mix of styles, sounds, and moods as James looks back at his past and takes stock of where he’s been and what he has learned from his past. The musical choices are uniformly strong with many pleasant surprises. A truly entertaining, satisfying process for listeners.

These daze, the above album’s songs can still be heard at  https://soundcloud.com/jamesmireau

There, the songs are listed in reverse order as opposed to their order on the CD. Since this is a concept album with intended transitions and motifs, I would suggest you listen to the songs on that site from bottom to top in order to duplicate the flow of the original album experience. 

This morning on Antiques Road Show, a mature adult son confidently sat with his mother’s vase and letter from his aunt regarding its importance and Tiffany nature. As things unfolded, the appraiser identified the vase–which the son couldn’t find with other Tiffany vases online–as a Loetz from the tail-end of the Austrian-Hungarian empire. His information was wrong; the aunt’s and mother’s information and understandings were also wrong and had perpetuated this error in perception, understanding, and appreciation. All these years had gone by and the piece was finally known by someone in the family for what it really was. And all that time had gone by with people dwelling in illusion, misinformation, and blind joy as to the real identity of the piece.

There have been many of these kind of errors on Roadshow before. And we know only too well that instructive play activity of passing a message down a line of persons only to arrive at a humorous distortion of truth. Truth is an elusive quality, albeit very desired and desirable. So, too, is correct and accurate information about many aspects of ourselves, others, life, the human condition, relationships, and the world. As so many of us live in dream–our often separate, individual dreams–we seek information, affirmation, and validation in this all-too imperfect world of experience. Only to be often surprised by what the true state of any act, thing, or process really is. Only to realize how little we really did know about something or someone. In the dark more then than in the light–our (entrusted) information and (assumed) knowledge.

(1st published here August 29, 2012)

You were the rarest book of all,
for me, the ultimate edition.
Much of you had been unread
though you remained in great shape,
unfaded and unmarked.
Crisp and fine,
inscribed to me only,
a true collectible.

Bibiliophile that I am,
I had never come across
such definitive copy.
Nothing chipped or shelf-cocked
about you.
A trim folio, unpaginated,
with no slipcase.
Your spine sunned
but binding intact.

I had no blurb to go by
but dedicated myself
to your sole acquisition.
Your front matter
and end-pages skim-read
as I turned you                                                                                                                    over in my hands, savouring
each distinguishing point.
Your non-gilt edges
and errata were all forgiven.
I loved most your imprint
your laid-ins
and variant proofs.

For me, as issued,
you were First Thus.
No bookplate ever
for you, o precious tome.

…………………………………

ps/ Stay tuned for a forthcoming new, unique, second blog devoted to Canadian literature which will exhibit dust jackets, ephemera, signed author items, and rare Canlit images not found anywhere else on the Internet.

(reprinted from August 30, 2012 entry)

It was time now for love’s new song. His salvation lay far beyond her imagined graces. It was time now to give thanks, to burn all mementos. He would sing of her praises beyond their conclusion. It was time at last for a song beyond seasons. A song beyond the knives and ashes of particular loves. A song beyond death, unwitholding and dazzling in its hopeful affects. In solitude once more, they withstand the changes in tides and reason, begin again the pas de deux of dream and spirit, resplendent like the dancing waves, strength unto strength. May this, their lost joy illumine forever some blessed isle or quiet hill. The spirit of forgotten seeds shall whisper now. Hear it speaking to the many–”Cast aside thy lowliness and be magnificent once more. Though their shadows be gone, their vision remains like remembered touch or stained glass moment. Life, breath and firmament shall make anew the greenness that hath faded from their fields. Gather unto thee another and sing glad the praises of the love-fallen saints. Come now to know this way, this bliss, this peace, this sacrifice, this touch, this wonder, this undying faith, this goodness, this heart and exaltation, this henceforth and forevermore, this beauty and its beholding, this spring promise and new awakening, this imagination and most humble blessing, this beatitude and prayer, this grace and glory, as it was in the beginning, in this world without end…”

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This poem from the current long winter of our discontent. (Ironically, Alison was gone before it got published.)

Picked up my copy of the anthology today at the Edmonton Room, reconnected with old writing friends, and renewed my membership to read and host next year. Entered the upcoming Poetry Festival to read a 30 second poem!

(lid of box for storing earphones; iconic image and truth)

“The world should listen then, as I am listening now!”–Percy Bysshe Shelley, last line of “To a Skylark”

(from Journal of Katherine Mansfield, 1914-1922)

“By health, I mean the power to live a full, adult, living, breathing life in close contact with what I love–the earth and the wonders thereof–the sea–the sun. All that we mean when speak of the external world. I want to enter into it, to be part of it, to live in it, to learn from it, to lose all that is superficial and acquired in me and to become a conscious direct human being. I want, by understanding myself, to understand others. I want to be all that I am capable of becoming so that I may be (and here I have stopped and waited and waited and it’s no good–a child of the sun. About helping others, about carrying a light and so on, it seems false to say a single word. Let it be at that. A child of the sun.”

…………….

“I want so to live that I work with my hands and my feeling and my brain. I want a garden, a small house. grass, animals, books, pictures, music. And out of the expression of this, I want to be writing.”

…………….

“But warm, eager, living life–to be rooted in life–to learn, to desire to know, to feel, to think, to act. That is what I want. And nothing else. That is what I must try for.”