Broken Things

I've broken many things, and I'm constantly amazed at how destructive I can be. Initially in my early childhood, I was very good at smashing things, windows, toys,(especially toy cars), and fences(the posts were good for making cheap baseball bats). I know now that I probably desired a little more attention, which I certainly got when I smashed something up. Says a lot, doesn't it. As I got to be a little older, say about eleven or so, I got to be a little less crude, and needy, and came to enjoy building things, go carts, bike ramps, tree forts, forts with whatever was at hand, usually a fort that had to be defended at all costs. War was the rule of fort making when I was a kid. If you built one then you were a target, so you had better be prepared to defend your stake and title or else it was either taken over, smashed to bits or burnt to the ground or both. You could try to hide your fort, but it would be only a matter of time until another bunch, "The Bastards", would find you out, and then bruises, blood, tears and telephone calls would commence. No one was left unscathed. Many times it was the actual building of the forts that would cause the most hurt, a boulder would slip and take off a fingernail or toenail or a nail from an old board would find it's way through a foot, or you would fall from one of the trees that were to be used as posts in your three story tree fort. We accepted these pains as a prelude to neighbourhood Armageddon.
I remember building rock forts, yes, forts made of layered rocks stacked as tightly as we could make them until we had a very well defensible structure, many times with a plywood top as a roof or second floor, all for the purpose of perpetrating aggressive acts towards a similarly crafted structure, built once again by "The Bastards". We would fuel ourselves up on whatever food was available, mostly peanut butter and jam and a highly sugared drink of some sort, and proceed to whip fist sized rocks at the other fort until we started to dislodge the walls.
Whipping rocks at each other was somehow not frowned upon as it would be now(it was, but we ignored the protests), it was just the easiest way to get at someone from a distance and rarely caused any serious damage, which I to this day find odd. Maybe we weren't really aiming as well as we could have. The saying "born with a rock in his hand", was a familiar one to me as a child. Of course I don't throw things anymore, considering my shoulders are pretty much buggered up. Lesson learned.

I should get back to the pretense for writing "Broken Things". The harbour back home in Clarenville was a dumping ground for every unwanted and "accidentally" lost thing, some that were meant to disappear and some that weren't; from old bikes around the government wharf, kittens in a burlap bag half floating/sinking in the shadow of the cliff, where old car and truck wrecks were left to rust away in the salt water below, to lost articles of wealth and sentiment, leading to those who were themselves overwhelmed by the sea. To dredge that harbour would be to dredge up the past, all the good and bad that would have been lost to the sea over the years.
I guess I've always found the sea to be a bit daunting and have never felt entirely comfortable upon it's surface. I can't help but reflect upon all that I've broken, lost or generally fucked up and use this metaphor as my own deep dark security blanket. It's a way to deny your feelings, just drowning everything in water until it sinks away, hoping some of it will never surface, yet half hoping it will. I guess I'm sounding as if I got something to hide, though nothing criminal I believe, just the usual teenage angst crap purring away adding to the already heady drum of deep water.
This makes one think about the nature of Trinity Bay, as it is a protected harbour, a good place to weather a storm. You can't help but imagine all the other things that are also being protected there, for what lies "protected" beneath would run the gamut from very good to absolutely shocking. Why would I say this? For the same reason that not every fish pulled out of that water is going to look appetizing, while others certainly are, yet are not. Looks aren't everything and tastes are always relative, even when enforced or "fadded" into acceptance, while the deeper urges get submerged, by will or whimsy.

Stoned The Moon

It looks to me I got to stand out in the rain on some Halifax dock and throw rocks at the moon's roiling reflection.
This would've been me dealing with some torrid relationship issues, although I was more going for a feeling here than a literal translation of something that really happened. So If by chance I let slip a real event here, it would be one that has escaped my memory. I'd try jogging it( my memory), but I can't stand that kind of exercise. You have to let some things stay in the shadows, just to add vague layers of experience to who you've become.
 I have incorporated some instances of my past within this song, as I lived it, when I was in art school back in the 80s. The old time machine is a slight reference to the clock on Citadel Hill, though I don't believe it was broken, maybe out a few minutes. I was also referencing my own broken sense of time and timing, which seem to me as much a blessing as it was a bother. You can ask Bob Rogers, my lithography instructor from art school, how many times I forgot to get the cleaning rags put out for the laundry service. I was single handedly the worst printmaking tech that worked at NSCAD. I would forget my feet if I wasn't tripping over them so much. I may be being a little hard on  myself, but I'd rather err on the side of me being a fuck up because I like the feeling of looking up at people rather than down at them. Thanks Bob for putting up with me.
Socially I was about as awkward as one could get, at least I felt that way. Clowns especially were not high on my list of happy things, they wore lots of make-up and I found them more disturbing than I should have. Maybe I pissed one off at the circus that would tent up every year in my hometown back on the Island. I was a bit of a pain and may have inadvertently caused a clown or two to have to chase me away one too many times from some booth or other. As kids we were pretty much Dennis the Menace on crack and there were few who would not catch our, soon to drive you crazy mad, eyes. Of course I turned into an introverted, harmless, keep my nose clean, and not bother a soul type, when I became a teenager. I had tripped right over my undocumented A.D.D phase and fell flat on my face doing safe time in my own company. I suddenly had developed a real fear of socializing and would go out of my way to avoid interacting with anyone. Why? Who knows. It's now a mystery to me, but it made me who I am today...Back to the topic
So I spun a bit of a tale that took place down near the waterfront around the time of Buskerfest, a yearly parade of carnival types and talented wanderers, along with artist and artisans; who would ply their respective trades to tourists and locals alike. Here was a stage that encapsulated my whole life for years, where I learned to live and fret out my social dysfunctions and play out my libido as much as a horny shy teen could manage to throw upon this odd world he found himself apart of.

Fuel For Thought

I was going to go into some details about why I wrote this song, but my eyes are telling me to close up shop before I fall asleep at the table. I'll spew all verbal  about this post tomorrow, though I'll leave the music to upload while I wander around getting ready for an early night....I will say one thing. I haven't got a clue as to what I said after I introduced the song title. Oh well, I confounded myself; not the first time, nor the last.
 Okay I'm back. The impetus for this song comes from my decade plus renovation of the old home we purchased back in the early 90s. I had just started flat roofing as a means to an ends, one that was supposed to be temporary, until I found something better. Well that didn't happen, did it.
The roofing industry lays claim to many of the daylight hours during the week, and into the weekend. This made fixing up our home  pretty much a night time affair. Kathy had her own job as a researcher for a magazine subscription company. Our two girls were at daycare with a neighbour in the town we bought the house in. I would work on the house at nights and on the weekends. Many nights wouldn't start until after 10 o'clock because the job demanded long hours and we would work quite a few days until dark. This made a speedy renovation an impossibility on our low wages and limited time. The whole affair was very trying on us, and as a result a lot of "Walter Mitty" or "Faustus Bidgood" type thoughts ran through my mind as our energy and bank account dwindled.
The line between a daydream and derangement can be a fine one, and I'm glad that thoughts and actions are in realms of their own or else I would've been in big trouble.  A crazy thought is all it ever was, as the frustration of  making ends meet gave vent to another song. The house itself is mostly finished, although with many a compromise and the odd lose end to take care of. Of course I didn't seem to learn a whole lot from the experience since I went and bought another older attached brick building further uptown. A repeat of our earlier renovators nightmare, with lots of crumbling bricks, rotting beams, and leaky roofs to fix. I have every intention to put in an art studio slash diner, but time and money are once again leaving me at wits end. The only difference is that I'm a fair bit older and more confident in my ability to repair things. Oh well, Maybe it will inspire me to write another song. I can do that just about anywhere.

A Roofer's Lament

The weather has finally started to clear up after a long winter and a very wet spring, so the pace of work is going to increase. I had spent the last month or so in limbo after I had quit my previous job. I had a run there of about 8 years, but I was starting to feel like I was being boxed in, mostly because of my issues with some of my fellow workers, well one in particular. I've got to say that I do have some specific idiosyncrasies that have turned me from being a easy going fellow to being an uptight prick, but that's what you get when you become overly concerned about the quality and quantity of work, those things expected of you in the past, which don't seem to translate as well anymore.
I realize very few people would even consider this line of work, it isn't easy and the hours are long, but in this area of southern Ontario the pay is pretty good. I only got into flat roofing as a way to get materials for this old century home I was renovating. A real dog of a building, that would've been razed to the ground if I had the money at the time to build a new one. That's another story in of itself.
I started in a work environment where you did it right or got yelled at, picked upon or fired. Well, that is not the way it works anymore and it definitely was far from ideal, but the expectations of doing a good job and getting a decent amount of work accomplished seemed to have taken a back burner to allowing the weeds to take over the lawn. The priorities have become stricter and the tension and stress has increased. I'm not saying I've got anything about stricter safety policies, or making sure that everyone is treated with respect. I am saying that there is a definite stifling of the work process, that makes everyone react a little slower, with a little more hesitation. Knowing how much leeway that you have, has sure gotten less, and harder to define. Everything seems to come close to being a violation of something or someone, and between these codes of conduct and safety is this imaginary world of the happy worker. Just doing your job is becoming a terribly hard thing to do anymore. It use to be the work in and of itself was the hardest thing, along with the odd asshole and dog breeder thrown in for good measure, but now there are so many restrictions a lot of us are bowing out. I did take the bow, but I'm going to return because I know where I stand in this particular business and frankly because the money is good, in comparison to other fields.
I would love to disregard the money involved, but to say that you can live on love is something I'll leave to the romantics. I'm under no illusion that I can just walk away from being responsible for my family's welfare and hope to do it with the crappy wages that a lot of people are supporting themselves on. Don't misunderstand me, I'm not trying to sound glib here. I would love to see parity in jobs and gender. I know very well what it is to live on, near and under the poverty level. We were both art students at one time, not exactly heavy hitters when it comes to making a living. This house that Kathy and I bought, was a gamble on our minimum paying jobs at the time and our abilities to juggle parenting, as we had to renovate a literal dump of a house, all while we put in 40 and 60 hours a week at work.
I'm not going to get into a prolonged tale of "back in my day", where we walked to school, uphill both ways, through twelve feet of snow, with nary a sock or shoe on, while fighting off  rabid black bears. I'm just trying to bear witness to the fact I've worked hard for what I got and am not looking to repeat everything over again. I don't mind hard work, but starting at the bottom with another roofing company or in a completely different job is not as easy as it was when I was younger. I know I've been trying to get a job,well one that fits, for the last month. My options are full of limits, so I'm debating going back to my old company. The Devil you know. Right? I just need to learn how to relax, which I'm finding isn't as easy an accomplishment as it should be.

Anyway this is an older song I wrote about the job that separates the sky from the earth.

I Really Like You

I thought I would post another song, just for the sake of posting, I guess. It's one of those avoid the relationship kind of songs. Landing somewhere between consuming and being consumed. I wasn't ready at this point in pursuing anything deeper in this relationship, knowing that I was going to have to redefine myself, when I was just getting to feel comfortable in my own skin. I spent a long time worrying over being by myself, that when it came to actually getting close to someone, I wasn't ready to forfeit, what I realized was the satisfaction I got being an individual. Of course that all changed when I met Kathy. That was the first time I actually felt "right" with another person. I could say this song in itself is more an amalgam of past relationships wrapped around one in particular, much like a grain of sand in a pearl, but that would mean I'm fooling myself. I would have pawned myself off with a fake pearl.
There are no allusions to anything specific here, so there is no need to look for a pointed finger or sight a targeted experience. The overall feeling compromises a surety. It is no more defined than a bottle of smoke, where the shape is define by the boundaries of the container. The lid stays on.

Take Us On A Trip - Charlie Sheen

I've been ruminating over this whole Charlie Sheen issue of late, that seems to have now disappeared below the radar, and decided to offer up a chorus or two to any who have manage to find this collection of musical musings.
I'm of two minds over how, "we" on the other side of the teevee screen relate to those who appear behind the glass. I feel sometimes as if I'm looking at a collection of petri dishes containing a microcosm of many blooming cultures. The experiment, I feel to be at times, is the moral quandary we place ourselves in when we get beyond the dish and start engaging ourselves in areas that are not ours to be familiar with. When I watch a television show I try to stick to the reason I started watching in the first place. I watch the news to find out some general knowledge of local and world events boiled down into palatable sound bytes. I watch cooking shows to see good food, and well nowadays it seems to be, to know how to swear, rage testosterone over underlings, remake sad establishments, romance the viewer, and basically to entertain the audience. You're probably getting the picture, because when I watch a comedy show I'm looking for a laugh. To be entertained. Sheen's character as Charlie Harper with the children's songwriter's alias of Charlie Waffles may have loosely been based upon his very real-life personality and lifestyle but I have no doubt that what happens to him in private really has nothing at all to do with me. I really could care less about his life outside the show, because unless he's done something so heinous that it overwhelms everyone around him, I can't go beyond his show to ask for anymore amusement. My right to be entertained ends there.

Where I do get to pass judgement, and really where Sheen should have probably thought beyond riding his horsey "Ego" to town, is when he threw the door to his world the rest of the way open on YouTube. For me his over the top narcissism and freewheeling misogyny, his crazy ramblings and dubious parenting have now become open fodder for the masses. What had once been a simple experiment in entertainment has now become a full blown disaster, or a coup of self promotion, depending on the view. Don't get me wrong, the meltdown makes for very interesting very wobbly news, and as for myself,  the inspiration for another song. I'm not exactly a raging fan of Sheen's but I have watched the show and have definitely laughed my arse off at times. So as far as doing the job he was originally hired to do, he did it well, three Emmys and two Golden Globe nominations well. In a way Sheen has done us all a favor and became the modern anti-icon of the well grounded man, which I could easily spin as being the qualities that a lot of men would aspire to anymore, concerning the shallow nature of a lot of entertainment nowadays. I could go even farther still, in saying we may have to redefine what amounts to being shallow at all. He is probably living his life to the fullest he knows how and may well be the deepest he'll ever get. At least he is all Sheen and not a clone and has been willing to melt in front of the world for our insatiable appetites. I just hope it was worth his while because the clones are being grown in labs everywhere. Who's candle is next to flare up I wonder? Which one will finally tire us out for falling down.

Why This Tune

I've recently saw the movie "Wristcutters: A Love Story" a cool little movie by director Goran Dukic. It's a story that occurs in a place created to house all the world's suicides. It comes across as a roadtrip of unrequited love, that begins in our world, meets in this desert realm of "suicide people" and ends as a new beginning back on earth. I don't know if these worlds are at all separated or if we occupy the same places, but in different states of awareness that the two realities are blind to each other, until of course the "miracles" start happening. Whatever. I found it an oddly distracting movie, very flat and matter of fact. It kinda reminded me of  "Down By Law", by Jarmusch, which has that low key slacker feel, as if we're just along for the ride. Both movies share appearances by Tom Waits who always seems to become a character in oddball low budget movies. Don't get me wrong. I don't see this as a detriment, quite the opposite, as it is the antithesis of the star making machine, that seems to dilute the personality and character out of everything it promotes by overblowing things. That is why I really enjoy these underdog or undervalued films. "Wristcutters" is about Love (the reason) suicide(The transportation). Suicide, which I feel to be the lack of love for oneself (exceptions, yeah), seems to be more like a vehicle to get the characters to the other side.  It is this vehicle that I'm interested in. Why suicide. I believe it is a thought that must occur to most people, if not all, at least once in their lives. No? Well I should really just speak for myself then. I don't feel any shame in having had such thoughts and I feel it a perfectly natural phenomenon. Suicide has always been seen as such a taboo subject, that it rarely comes up in conversation without a lot of fluster, anxiety or consternation. A topic not to be taken lightly and to be treated with kid gloves. That may be true for some folks but there are a lot of us who know it's always something that lingers around us, yet only shows itself when we start to doubt ourselves intensely, but on the whole not something most, including ourselves, would act upon. Muse over, maybe, but no further. I myself am prone to self doubt, and sometimes intense self doubt; although most of the people who know me would say otherwise, but, eh, it's hard to convince people that you actually have these thoughts because you keep them to yourself. I think making light of morbid subjects takes away it's edge and allows it to air out. So I guess trivializing suicide in some circumstances does lessen its impact all around; of course it does depend on who is doing the trivializing.
I think that there are many levels of suicide, the ultimate of which would be of the body, but the worst would be of the mind. The soul, well I wouldn't know what to say there as I haven't got a clue what one is, outside of other people's descriptions. Suicides seems to me to be an act of rhetoric, because in the end it is how effective the level of persuasion is that makes it happen at all. You really have to be convinced it's worthwhile doing over everything else.  Of course there are evil idiots out there who take it upon themselves to convince people to off themselves, like that Melchert-Dinkel fellow, a male nurse who posed as a woman, who befriended and persuaded people on or near the verge of suicide to go through with it, entering pacts with them in a weird supporting role.  An evil thrill seeker is all he is. This is not to be confused with assisted suicides where consenting adults play out their lives for specific reasons, usually more to do with the physical quality of their lives, but haven't the capacity to end it without help. I believe it's a choice that one should be able to make for oneself without penalty, if the appropriate measures have been taken into account to lessen the burden on all who would be affected. In the end I would like to be able to own my own life and rather the "state" bugger off and leave me to make my own decision.  Having a "thought" is as close as most of us will ever get to ending things. I'm sorry that others have made such a sacrifice, but life goes on.

I've seemed to have gotten off the train here. I better throw myself back on the tracks, because I don't want to get bogged down in the weight of it all. I really liked the character Eugene in the movie, the electrocuted Russian rocker. I found he was inspired by the lead singer for Gogol Bordello, a band I really like, definitely their song "Through The Roof Underground". They along with Waits are on the soundtrack. I took a turn from their Gypsy sound, to write "Why this tune", although I've not used anything specifically from the movie, well not something I could point a finger at as a reference. I guess I would say I was loosely inspired. Hopefully I haven't come across as too glib here, because half the time I can't tell whether or not I've been too blunt or not. A trait I've had a lot of problems reigning in.