Volume IV: Sequestration

Eating seaweed and hummus, wearing a sweatshirt with horses on it, looking into the abyss and finding comfort in its depths, breathing ever so barely, moist with exhaustion and ocean air, hungry, pained, looking out the window toward and away from inspiration, wondering what to eat but not wanting to get up, realizing it's time to bathe, noticing that it's time to breathe, pondering future projections, eyeing two guitars and a ukulele, trying not to think about work, trying desperately not to try, smelling food and the summer air, watching the grey, refusing to be held down, memorizing anachronistic procedures, meeting The Ones, teething on still and moving images, hungrier all the time, blue and red and black all over, preparing to sell every thing, looking for fresh fruit, imagining zebra skin, envisioning vibrant mandalas, needing a drink.

Volume IV: Nobody Knows

Villain or victim, people have always taken me far too seriously.  If you think I might be joking, I probably am.  I long for and simultaneously bemoan the days when the internet was nubile, when our classmates and future lovers were but silent icons on a screen, pixels making an appearance only to stick around for further analysis.  My renderings and writings have extended far into the technological realm and remained firmly grounded in the reality of ink and paper.   I have a clear preference for one over the other, though you wouldn't know it considering how much time I spend on each side of the brain.

Letters that go unread or unnoticed might be doubly sad as a cheque that flies into a sewer grate before its hungry owner's weary eyes.  We've all seen those eyes before, in the mirror or otherwise. As someone who was entrenched in political studies for many years (a youthful pastime of sorts), I see the politician in every one of us.  Some of us are naturals.  The expansiveness of the human psyche allows for copious distractions and interactions, but there seems to be a natural limit to this madness.  A turnaround starts once we are overwhelmed with infinite technological possibilities:  "I could message anyone in the world right now, or I could walk up the stairs and talk to my roommate."  The mundane option keeps you grounded, and the higher flight takes you wherever it may go.

I've seen entryways to hell and to heavenly wilderness mazes that go on and on without any turns.   I can just imagine what others have seen.  In the earlier days of this global community, I .took advantage of the roommate option:  if you're close by and you like each other, why waste your time pining after souls all over the earth?  There is immense comfort in our humanity, and our love of other land souls.  Spirit through technology is not something that many people have mastered.  I know that our enlightened elders might see virtue in us being connected, but see harm in our lack of humanness as we go about our days pinned to screens instead of squealing children.  We let our fingers do the talking as we remain eerily silent.  Writers have been doing this for centuries, but we used to have to read things aloud occasionally, for dramatic effect.

The voice has been loved and lost.  

Everyone I talk to cherishes a good singer and a good conversationalist equally.  All of those passionate letters that get no response see their original meaning severed in two as time passes.  No reciprocity for such a commitment of words means no continued connection, and every time, we start anew.  I`ve always despised my writing just a little bit more than I love it.  I`ve spilled my heart onto so many people I couldn`t begin to count.  Each one of them deserved what they saw and felt, and most, in turn, have shown me what I deserve.  My friends and family have all written to me at one time or another.  This is my first language.  Many people, I'm sure, are afraid to commit their hearts to words on paper or a screen, for they will see in those letters and pixels their whole being laid out like a puzzle in pieces, and then of course, they`ll want to put it all back together. It can be done.  It can be painful, like finding a lost art.  It can lead to a significant - though not disproportionate - amount of rejection.
We reach out for it, pull back a red velvet curtain, and divine the sensuality that lies in etymology.  Or risk losing our words between our teeth.

  

Volume IV: The Return

I have so many jobs I sometimes forget which one pays...The ones that pain aren't so often the same.  I'm married, and he sits in the other room writing, and his music comes from a deep, spiritual place that I once misunderstood.  I champion the underdogs because I am one of them.  Channelling all of your being into a creative force means entering into a race with It.  Tell yourself you have a long way to go if you want a shot at being the best in the universe.

We pulled into the alley and had that "Is this the place?" conversation that lasts only seconds but feels like a waste of time.  When I climbed up out of the car, black and low-slung, I saw a black and white cat a few feet away and reached out to it.  Contrary to my current rural placement I was in a city, where cats fight not only nature for their lives, and it bit me.  Not a bad bite but it made me smile nonetheless.  Contrariness has made itself a theme in this life, and so many others, but you only want to contradict yourself for so long before you lose your glasses and have to start all over again.

The folk scene that had embraced us years before was warm and abounded with life's happiness.  They didn't need our help.  The punks and the higher-ups were similarly independent, and I found myself on a mission to find those in need.  The message has often been unclear but the messenger has always been apparent.  Take the rhythm of his and the message of hers and mix them up in a great mortar with the message of his and the rhythm of mine.  Each drop of water into the remains lubricates the communication, making it mobile.  Perhaps many of those in need are invisible to me, but I see them every now and again - they are the well-adjusted, intelligent, music-loving humans with love in their eyes and the whole world in their minds.  I am a muse, and that is as wondrous as it is terrifying, just as I chose the path without knowing the destination.

There are some lovely sights along the way - a rocking horse bobbing in the bed of a truck; a mystical sunset blanketing the cries of coyotes; cars pushing past us toward certain death on the highway seconds later; so many dead bodies and belongings of the deceased.  Karmic laws, or vibrations if you prefer, map out interactions as they are occurring, keeping you abreast of your own progress if you're willing to look.  

My favourite director walked into the cafe in Ontario where I spent my days behind the counter as a barista, one who pulls espresso shots and shoots the shit with all sorts of caffeine-addicted folk.   It is just as romantic as it sounds, and you end up cleaning toilets more often than you do making latte art and handing it to your idol.  The man who waltzed in with him was someone I loathed without merit, I felt annoyed by his presence and his demeanour until that day, when I realized - he is just unique.  He puts himself in unusual situations to be with artists, a lifestyle to which I could relate.  They were scouting locations for the anti-sequel to a favourite film of my youth, but I didn't know it.  I was too wrapped up in my recently completed second album, which seems to have been about telepathy and ecological warfare.  I was reading Thompson and Kerouac like we all do, but taking it in like no one else ever does.

He was coming through the doorway and I stared at his hat, at the crooked framed picture of old New Berlin on the wall, and his boots.  He smiled at me as his cohort introduced us - none was necessary - and I smiled and looked around for someone to share in my delight but my coworker friends were occupied or otherwise unaware of the momentous nature of this meeting.  Later, his companion, knowing about my band, asked me if I knew the rock starlet who would co-star in the film they were shooting.  I said I didn't, but I related to her, and we'd crossed paths.  He looked at me the way TV and movie producers always do.  I didn't have the words to express the impact that this occasion had on me for many years, and in fact, I'm surprised to find that I still don't.  Perhaps one day I will articulate further the joy I felt hosting my hero for a brief stay.  I didn't ask for anything, just gave him my word and my handiwork.  I hope he enjoyed that god damned coffee!

I found this path not knowing where it ends, and I shall not stray. 

Volume III: "Unity"

The palpable momentum toward singularity has been swirling about the upper reaches of my mind.  The silicon and the mercury.  A full spectrum of integrated circuits, resting up for the big send-off, busted up from being tossed onto a pile of debris dripping with scalding liquid metal.  That pressurized headache that everyone always seems to be experiencing, the wincing and and tooth-gnashing.  The ceaseless efforts to put mind into machine.  The universal sensation of being threaded about the head of a pin.

The moon.

As the meteorites come down, we fall back into old habits.   We take our bagged upsets and childhood tragedies and leave them at the curb, only to cock our heads and compare our accumulated anxiety levels with our neighbours when pick-up day never arrives.  I stopped eating animals over 15 years ago, yet I didn't feel accomplished or free until very recently.  Actions, activities, habits, whatever you call them do not usurp spiritual belief and incantation.  Thought taken without emotion becomes a sturdy median.  Ideas - and emotionless absences thereof - have abounded in those fifteen years of targeted peace, research, and heartache.  In my youth, wanted to take on humanity from a soapbox, but as I have matured mentally and my musculature has evolved and I cradle senses that I did not recognize as a child, I find I enjoy supporting others' platforms.  I wanted to take on the conspiratorial non-humans face-to-face, backing my overwrought emotions with stacks of proof.  But wanting so badly, I became ill, and I have had to rest.  My body thrives, my spirit vibrates, and my mind persuades me more each day.  It compels me along a dusty red path, unblinking eyes and reptilian scales along the way, and impresses upon me my own true nature.  Old habits die.  They are reborn.

We are told that molten lead burns human flesh and the putrid belies the beautiful.  We recycle the by-products of death the way others do glass, a product of technological times.   A quiet child, I wanted to talk to spirits, to sing to and for and about them.   Yet it was not until I came closer to death that I have been able to do so.  I honour the death I witness and try to take in all of it as often as I can, tip-toes surprisingly agile on a roof's ledge.  I know I might slip but I will not.  Years gone into darkness.  I look up and look down.  Through sheer lack of will any of us could end or begin, stop eating flesh or start wearing hides, reaching into each other's eyes and devouring the light as we go.

The shadowy bustling spirits and eyes and whispers and pokes and messages bellowed from the city and the sea.  The angle of the cosmos and everything askew, we are imperfectly aligned. We drift down to our places and dig in our toes when it feels right, either to plant ourselves there forever or to re-visit that spot in time like a lost love.  Not a moment to waste.   

Tick tock. 

Volume III: "Push Became Pull"

Living here on the East coast for the first time in our lives is phenomenal.  I am still unable to put it into many words - ironic when you examine my previous writings.  I suppose some things simply cannot be articulated.  I encourage any and every person who longs to live by the sea to get up out of your chair and do it.  It doesn't have to be an expensive or a reclusive endeavour.  To be one with the sea is a human feat rarely surpassed with sincerity.    If you crave it and you can make it happen for yourself or for another...then what are you waiting for?

As we made our way through Quebec a few weeks ago I felt some old and painful feelings, the dreary grey blanket of methane that hovers above the highway for a day's drive was symbolic as both the symptom and the cause.  We made our way into Ontario and things cleared up, the sky was bluer than I remembered and we saw and ate and hugged and loved and felt at home but vaguely out of place.   As we drove into Toronto, I felt the bubbling anticipation that used to knock me down but this time it fueled me.  It lifted me up.   The skyline from my videos and dreams looked so surreal as to solidify its mythological status in my mind.   "This place isn't real, but nothing is.  This is my home."   As we drove into the city all of my anxiety dissolved.  My concrete expression broke off and fell onto my feet.

The first person we noticed in the city that day was Julie, walking down Spadina singing to herself and grinning big.   A few hours later I got out and was hunting for a bathroom in Kensington and the air was absolutely delicious.  Hundreds of symbiotic breathing bodies and the smoke of incense and imported humour.   It was raining in February.  Nobody stared at anybody else.  My shoes echoed against so many stalls and my hair would remain soaked in wet fragrant fire for days.   We shot a couple of videos with Exclaim!, a national treasure whether or not anybody will admit it; I have always loved what they do.  Later that evening we manned the door at our show and the love we felt was so palpable that I couldn't take off my jacket all night.  I kept hugging myself and walking around blocks and blocks sucking in the air knowing it would sustain me.  Nothing felt the same.  The pollution is less acrid in the winter and our vitamin regimen, careful eating, Neti-cleansing and mental focus let me breathe deeply and crave the smoke of the city long after we left.  We saw Ryan C and Tim that night and were reeled back into years-old memories and saw each other anew, Andy and Nathan and Rebekah and Jennifer and so many others.  It was hard to count heart beats that night.

***


I am no longer cynical or competitive.  Those efforts are exhausting, and a waste of cosmic time.  That which is meant to be will be, and not for reasons of fate.  There is little use longing for those people or scenarios or events whose existence depends solely upon your own mind.  People will come into your life when they are ready and have the effect that they - and you - choose.  When you meet, you will know you have always known.  When you love, you will know you have always loved.  I'm confident, these days, that my influence is real and my purpose is clear.  I exist to help people; to help a universe of beings find their way.  I don't take this lightly or heavily because, once again, I don't have the surplus energy required to do so.  Rather,  I live each day as its own and know that my understanding of my purpose has come to a fruition that will last either a few months or a few lifetimes.

I mention "little use" in these longings because it would be unfair not to acknowledge the influence that grasping or longing often has on artistic outputs. Without going into specifics, I can think of hundreds of notable albums that would not have been realized were it not for intense and unhealthy feelings of want.  Living in destitution usually coincides with the creation of these artistic works - certainly not just musical ones - and their appearance in this world is more of a release than an inception.  An end rather than a beginning.  A message in a bottle and the river on which it floats; the hand that scoops it out; the eyes and the mind and the soul.  I find myself with neither the time nor energy to do anything but heal, yet I cannot dismiss the push and pull I feel around me without effort.  Mental stamina takes work acquire and maintain unless you were fortunate enough to be brought into light with this training.   Closer to the sky, I can feel the ripple of my actions and watch it continue to flow out into the smooth gold light and become one again with everything.  The moon is perched at a different angle.  The first thirty years of one's life are often spent looking at a farther away sky, at fewer stars, a smoky haze before the sun and the unholy glow of perpetual distraction.   The next thirty must only be spent continuing one's work in their own rightful mind, gently manning a web of compassion without destruction.

The beginning is always the end.   

Volume III: "Seven Year Hitch"

Forecasts lie and fortune tellers don't, for a fortune foretold is not a fortune at all, but rather, a risk.  Tell them what they want to hear when they want to hear it and the water is calm; clear sailing.  Tell them the truth and risk losing them forever or returning them to their original and rightful place in your heart, if it existed at all.

We left one town because it felt too small, another because it felt even smaller, and another because it all just felt too close.  The dead mice and the cemetery down the street, the cold fingers in the basement, the guy in the living room with his rusty old cash register and beer bottles. The old man on the street, watching, waiting for the right moment to make me his own.  The windows nailed shut.  The bath tub.  It all came pressing downward, inward, painfully squeezing out whatever life was leftover from the first quarter-century.  Trouble comes when everything gets jumbled up, day and night, right and wrong.  Living and dead.

A magnificent by-product of past violence, beauty blooms without any of us noticing.  I look into a mirror and I see who I am and who I was and what I will be - all one and the same. The immense weight of the life I have both chosen and been summoned for distills my being into something greater, purer.  Truth comes only out of light and darkness is the antidote.  To have been shrouded in darkness for a lifetime is never to breath, never to feel the sun on your skin and put your face in it.   Never to drink the water like an animal, or live without fear.  Take a proverbial fucking breather.  Suck the air into our body and taste it, succumb to the healthy sensations that life has always offered.  Take the gift that appears without warrant for it is the most touching gesture of all:  if you love me enough to think of me when I'm not around, then your love is a gift.  Choose to accept this gift and life will continue to unfold, exponentially faster, until you reach its peak.  Transformation is viable for all of us.  We simply need to put our minds to work by putting them to rest.   

Volume III: "Sideways Kiss"

People have changed over the last decade.  Of course they always do, always have and will, but this time it's discernible to me and you, which is what makes it relevant.  The changes feel urgent - the downward gazes, the blue glow, the painful fingers, the waning confidence, the lack of immunity, the dullness in the eyes, the chemical haze.

Their attention has been funneled into another dimension, one so carefully and corporately fabricated as to reel you in instantly once its hook is in you.  The violence of the digital age is apparent in things like video games whose purpose is to simulate the mass murder of prostitutes, soldiers, and other innocents.  It is just as evident, however, in the eyes of the forlorn, those lost with and without technology in the palms of their hands.  For if you succumb to the age of re-connection and let your previous lives fade with the beauty of the analogue, then you will find yourself just as alienated as those with paper novels in their hands and dirt under their fingernails.  They can't get in touch with anybody in person, and you can't tear your eyes off of a tiny space between your hands.

Are you in this world, or are you in your mind alone?

Can you be touched, or loved?


Do you exist?