SANS BLOG'S MOST FASCINATING PEOPLE OF THE YEAR

"FUCK BARBARA WALTERS! FUCK BARBARA WALTERS!"

while she goes on about her paris hiltons and michael moores, i direct my attention towards the people of the ukraine who rose up against corruption and electoral fraud, something a few of us could take examples from. yushchenko, though poisoned and humiliated, rose up without hesitation and asked a nation to rally behind him as he brought them their will.

i'm tellin ya, if all works out with yushchenko and the orange revoltuion, ukraine is going to be the next big spot to party in europe.

i can't help but think this picture could end up in the vice do's. long live the orange revolution! let's hope it exports to places like turkmenistan where the united states gives aid to their saddam-like ruler, turkmenbashy, who's practically renamed the whole country after himself and instituted some very insane and bizarre laws. did i mention he had a statue built of his likeness, in pure gold, that rotates with the sun, so that all the residents in a city named after him can worship his persona. talk about ego.

PEOPLE DO ROCKSTEADY

i feel so overwhelmed by reggae. spending half my days with rastas from the islands and their middle class north american acolytes, the sounds of reggae, dub and ska have invaded my brain like it did the air of london neighbourhoods in the 60s and 70s. no wonder the clash and the whole damn punk movement were into it. it allowed them to enjoy music that was thoroughly unaggressive yet equally as poweful socially as punk was with all of its anger and outsider mentality. sometimes punks need to chill, so thanks to groups like the clash and the specials for turning kids onto reggae and all that goes along with it.

god love jamaicans and islanders for their contributions to music despite their often times extereme poverty amidst political instability and daily violence on the street. all the while, under duress, they've been able to remain calm and give us music which never strays form the heartbeat and continually chants down babylon. sure, it may sound cheesy nowadays with all its synthetic production and mindless garbage offshoots and bastard children like dancehall, but to many, it's one of the last bastions of music that embraces the human race with warmth and compassion and ultimate salvation.

the music matured from its early sound system origins (prince buster - al capone) and its soon thereafter instrumental stage (the upsetters - return of the django) to a socially relevant and mature artform and way of life that is simultaneously expressively political (steel pulse - babylon makes the rules), inherently populist (junior murvin - police and thieves), tragic-comic (desmond dekker - israelites), outrageously fun (toots & the maytals - funky kingston), racially contentious (steel pulse - babylon makes the rules), hearteningly spiritual (rastaman chant - bob marley) and globally aware (bob marley - war). but most of all, the people love it like they love freedom and sex and sunshine and family. i wish we had the same passion for music here in north america that they have in jamaica and the whole carribbean for that matter. we're nowhere near that level of respect for our music. we shit all over our music all the time, and what for?

HOLIDAY FUNTIME

i had this really outrageous dream last night in which i was part of a terrorist cell whose aim was to blow up the CN tower. somehow, i was selected by this group of islamic militants to be the one who set the charges. the plan was to wire up the bathroom of the CN tower with explosives. they knew this guy was going to come and stop me from doing it, so the plan called for me to kill him by tricking him into drinking tide. he certainly came, and i disposed of him quickly by offering him the tide, clearly in an unadulterated tide bottle that was clearly labelled "tide", but he drank it anyway and died by puking up a light blue yogurt-like substance. i could see on my portable video screen that militant friends were cheering me on, saying "you mut do it now, the final step!" as i set the charges on the toilet, i thought to myself, "is this right? aren't a lot of people going to die?" and then i justified it by reasoning that the general consensus was that the CN tower was a big eye sore and no one in the city liked it, and people across canada would say en masse "see? toronto isn't the centre of the universe" so i'm pretty sure that by the time the dream was over, the charges had been detonated and the tower was in rubble.

*********



the radio show now has its own blog. i'm looking to update this as often as possible and i'd like some people to contribute reviews and musical suggestions and industry news, etc. please let me know if you're serious about this.

NIGHT OF THE LIVING HOTELS

the radio report on the protests in Ottawa was finally broadcast yesterday morning, a very rewarding experience for guy stevos industries which will hopefully turn out to be awarding if I can get my act together and shop it around. we can’t get enough of it over here, we’re throwing files into the air in anticipation of the next scoop.

we headed down the hudson’s bay trail of coolness that is the queen w. strip, a relatively new environment for the stevos crew. it appears that hipness is traveling even further westward these days. I’d heard about it for so long, and finally, i got to see what all this fuss was about surrounding these new hotel-cum-full-club-experience dotting the edge of the strip.

the drake looked too glitzy for my taste, but they didn’t bat half an eyelash at me when I snuck into a private party for some well needed free dinner in the lounge, although I didn’t dare venture upstairs (you must have THIS much money to enter). i retreated to the drake underground (where they let the children make noise) where stephen marshall of the guerilla news network screened a number of clips and shorts from his work as creative director and chief video artist/activist at GNN. we got us a good one hour report in the works, yes sir. he showed some clips from battleground, his on-the-scene documentary from the frontlines of iraq, as of yet unreleased in theatres but selling well on dvd and looking to hit the festival circuit hard real soon, and this revolution, the film that got him and rosario dawson arrested in new york this summer during the republican national convention.

i ran into the infamous and dark peter m, who after letting marshall know how offended he was by his work, dragged me to the gladstone just down the street, which was a rather happenin’ place filled with the 20-40 crowd, but of course, the select few of them who are so bored with their own neighbourhoods that they have to come all the way to queen and landsdowne to grind with each other on a hump night in what was once the lobby of one of toronto’s more hard-up hotels. oh, but of course, they’ll never cross the tracks past gladstone ave, so the frontier has been drawn. finally, an end to dutch elm disease that is queen st.’s western expansion.

oh well, I pity those poor folks at blow up’s new location, where someone just got stabbed on the weekend and now ceases to be alive.

toronto gets really violent over the holiday season. no one really knows why it happens now instead of other times of they year. we’ve seen two family suicides and three stabbing deaths over the past two weeks. I know, it happens all the time around the world everyday, but having all this shit happen too often in your own city around xmastime just makes it so shitty in a more personal way than anyplace else.

PROTEGERAS NOS FOYERS ET NO DROITS

not everday can be a victory day. sometimes, the fact that you're alive and doing your own thing is a victory in itself. when yu know you've done your best at one thing, everything else sits at a notch below, even if it turns out differently than you'd imagined it. nothing is ever a loss if it means that you learned from it.

yes, it's warm outsid in december in toronto. the weather is better now than it's been since october. this is not the toronto i spent my childhood in. and it's fucked up, but some days, you just have to relish the the shining sun.

i'm finall looking forward to a proper good night sleep when this day is over in a few hours.

*****


saw the most BEAUTIFUL girl/woman on the streetcar platform the other day. she was holding a fresh copy of 1984 and reading the early chapters. damn the gurv for having my copy of orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London - read it online if that's your thing here.

i envisioned a situation...

"i see you're reading 1984. if you like orwell, you should read this," i'd say and hand her down and out, "it's our of print."

i'd get up and leave, and when she'd open the front cover and see a note.

yeah, right...

i dug her physique and presence so much in those fifteen minutes that to keep myself from beating off publicly, i had to turn around every so often and look at the guy a wasy behind me who kinda looked like the rev.

someone send me an angel to love me good and lie in bed with me in a time of need.

I GET THE HEAT

The WHO's "Tommy" is one of the great musical works of the 20th century, no question about it. since the age of twelve, i have been criminally in tune with this great collaboration with greatness, which i greatly swear in all sincerity. just play the opening to "acid queen" and i'm yours. i watched a deafening pete townshend on the dvd tube tonight as he explained his logic behind tommy and playin with the who. to roughly and unjustly paraphrase him: "i was unhappy with playing in the band, but what sustained me was something that began with 'can't explain'. with that record, we had a success that reached a lot of people, and i was at a point where i was being paid to do that again, so i felt i had a commission, and therefore a responsibility to do something about this powerful position. with 'tommy', i wanted people to get in touch with their spirit of ritual, their embrace of the abstract. you see roger up there singing 'see me feel me' looking like god with those lights behind him, and we can see for the first time since our club days every face in the crowd, as they've been flooded with this really bright light. so when we start singing 'listening to you' we've got the crowd all there for one purpose,. you hear the words come about, 'listening to YOU right behind YOU i get the HEAT' do they mean anything? no, nothing, they're purposefully abstract. so this idea of sprinkling something spiritual on the audience with something also vaguely religious can be very powerful, and we'd end on a crescendo so we coud feel that the audience had breached a wall and reached another level."

so all of a sudden, the WHO go from being a macho fuel band to a group interested in at the very least, uniting people in purpose for some common goal. i wonder if the same degree of theatrics and spiritualism have been heavily apparent in the rhetoric and propaganda of revolutionary movements, for better or for worse.

let's remember that in the same year tommy came out, a group out of the anti-war movement in the states called the weathermen would begin to form what was later known as the notorious WEATHER UNDERGROUND.



they were a force to fuck with, that's for sure. they played it nice until the FBI assassinated their good friend FRED HAMPTON, a young activist and speaker with the black panthers who was killed by the pigs in a staged gunfight that should have inflammed americans, but didn't. so they launched a bombing campaign on the crookkked system reponsible for the atrocity of vietnam in the global climate, and the repression of racial equality and the limitations over freedom of political action at home.

my question is: what is going to be the spark that blows everything up in our faces in this climate of bush? it isn't the fraud election of 2000, which could have been averted if americans were more like ukranians. american voters could really take a lesson from yushchenko, a prime minister who took on the president in ukraine's complex and corrupt government. he was poisoned for it, and his face left disfigured. yet he continued to fight for presidency, not because of his ego, but because the people came out and stated quite clearly that they wanted change, and they wanted yushchenko to be fairly appointed the opportunity to be the new face of democracy in the ukraine. but not americans. they rally around a sod like kerry, who, despite his good intentions, can't convince enough people that he's worthy of turning the country around. they abandoned kucinic and nader and the only real politicians in high places for kerry, who despite a hard fight in 1970 against the bullshit in vietnam (he should know, he fought), could not come out against the bullshit in iraq and the myriad of issues that surround its originators in the bush team.

it's tough to blame those poor folks for putting their hard earned energy into kerry. the system is so removed from the american people that they had little say in the matter. it was easy to adopt the anyone or anything but bush rationale with such little power. but it's time america stops waiting for the next michael moore movie or episode of crossfire to tell them what to do. thanks mike, we love ya, but you're never gonna stop this bush guy alone.

will there be an event that carries the magnitude of kent state in its shocking brutality? what will happen here in fortress north america when the resistance really gets pissed off? will the war come home like it did for the weathermen?

wake up america. how many times do you have to hear it? your country is at war and it's under national attention. your president is your problem for the next four years. we arond the world can kick and scream all we want, but it's up to you ultimately to "free the ballot", as jean st.vil told us at the bush protest two weeks ago in ottawa. "to free the ballot," he said, "we must stop the bully and his bullets." it's up to you to jam the machines that make those bullets, just as it is ours in canada to end our complicity in this movement of death that grows more and more accomodating to bush now that chretien is sitting in his ottawa condo retiring to the great political desk in the sky. and it can't just be students anymore leading the charge.

there are many things we in canad can do to "put our bodies on the line as bodies are being eliminated across iraq," to steal a phrase from andrea schmidt of the iraq solidarity project. i would suggest the follwing:

- put pressure on paul martin to take the same stance as jean chretien on the bush issue: strictly business but no buddy-buddy friendship. such a position onyl puts martin, and canada, at risk of being continually coopted by the republican weldpolitik. this means giving him some flack when he comes to visit instead of feeding him our best foods.

- help was resisters like david sanders, brandon hughey and jeremy heinzman. there's going to be a draft, and we need to help lawyers like jeffrey house put pressure on the gov't to treat war resisters like any other refugee in the legal process, but in the meantime, the only system dealing with the coming influx of resisters is the provisionary one we can come up with until the gov't improves its position.

- end security certificates and other spillovers of US homeland security in our country. stop throwing muslims in jail without charges and extraditing them to the states so they can be further deported to places that will torture or murder them.

15 FAVOURITE ALBUMS OF THE YEAR IN FIVE SENTENCES OR LESS

Tortoise – All Around You

It’s a soundtrack for your dreams of prehistoric travel. Lush to the extreme without falling into new-age wankery. Calculated micro-metrically to cause visions of diplodocuses bathing in waterfalls.

Devendra Banhart – Nino Rojo + Rejoicing in the Hands

Two albums that can be viewed as one, in which case it makes for two hours of sitting crossed legged on your rug imagining that you’re either the guy or girl in “Norwegian Wood”. Play this album for your children in ten years and they’ll have no major problems growing up. It’ll be like when our parents introduced us to Cat Stevens. Or better yet, what we could have enjoyed if our parents had let us listen to acid-era Brian Wilson. “Be Kind” should win a Grammy for “Best Song In A Genre Not Found at the Grammy’s”.

!!! – Louden Up Now

Every song on the album is a hard-arsed banger, except for a brief interlude, which is really a banger of an interlude. Nick Offer reminds us what it’s like to really love to swear when you’re eight years old and pissed at the world. Every time you put on this album or any !!! album for that matter, you have your own private party in your head, and all your friends show up to tell you psyched they are to see these guys live. They wanna thank you for it, big time, with lots of free beer.

Animal Collective – Sung Tongs

We’ve entered a new era of home recording. I’m hoping that the kids out there will try at least once to put down their electric guitars, turntables or whatever the new penis of music is, get five of their friends into one room and record songs that are 90% vocally driven. This album proves that you don’t need lyrics to write singing parts, so long as you can remain innovative with gibberish sounds, nonsensical statements and loud exhalations.

Arcade Fire – Funeral

Here we were, thinking that hype was a problem, when all of a sudden, a band that’s worth it plays some big gigs, rocks the house, and releases a concept album about death and power outages. There may never be an album so appropriately released for the fall season again. Produced in the most professional living room in the country.

Hidden Cameras – Mississauga Goddamn

Do you believe in the good of life? Well, you should. If you don’t, give this album a go and it’ll warm your cold, cynical heart and remind you of how lucky you are to be alive and not losing limbs in foreign countries.

Mahogany Frog – Vs. Mabus

Why be afraid of progressive rock? The 70’s are nothing to be ashamed of. Tortoise can be compared to Weather Report without bricks being thrown, so let’s put our differences aside and embrace instrumental jazz-rock fusion, and at the coming-out party we can freak out to Mahogany Frog.

Air – Talkie Walkie

I once listened to my step-sister’s boyfriend, a slick Southern charmer from Virginia now living in LA, tell me that the best way to get a girl into the sack is by putting a Zero 7 album on the stereo system. When I told him Air was better, he said, “You mean those two French fags? Yeah, they’re alright.” He’s obviously never gotten a blowjob while listening to “Surfing on a Rocket.” I’m going to chalk up that argument in the win column.

Warsaw Village Band – People’s Spring

Young people need to look back on traditions, and while they’re at it, they can redefine them when necessary. On People’s Spring, the Warsaw Village Band turn wedding songs and Chassidic dances into feminist anthems and freedom jams. The dulcimer/string section/body drum combo might just be the new de rigeur of the 21st century.

Sadies – Favourite Colours

There’s no shame in loving Johnny Cash and The Byrds at the same time. The Sadies have marked new territory in their quest for gold. We should revive AM Radio and give it to the Sadies for all the lonely people in the woods.


Coco Rosie – La Maison de Mon Reve

What a way to go broke? These two sisters do it in style by flying to Paris and cooping themselves up in a tiny apartment with nothing but a piano and a guitar and some children’s toys.

The Ex – Turn

We need poets we need painters we need poets we need painters we need poetry and paintings.

The Go Team – Thunder, Lightning, Strike

Nothing is more fun than double dutch on the funky schoolyard train, dig? These here cats gon be round long time, sho nuff!

Medeski Martin & Wood – End of the World Party (Just in Case)

This band is ridiculous. They just do whatever the fuck they want. They don’t even really need to keep time with one another anymore. So they make two albums that shake the foundations of jazz and then release a basic, laid-back groove album that even frat boys can love.

Brian Wilson - Smile

The maniac has finally put it together after 35 years in a skullduggery. Smile has been revived and sounds better with actual lyrics to go along with the “ooga chucka” ones. Wilson hasn’t lost much of his youth, thankfully, and as a result, his vision is just as clear as it was before the drug cocktails entered the picture.

BEST FILMS IN TWO SENTENCES OR LESS

Control Room

Cured my Farenheit 9/11 hangover. Finally, a documentary about Iraq that brings the heartache to us without prying open our mouths and stuffing it down our esophaguses.

Discordia

Remember those guys who smashed the windows? And the guys who hated them for it? They’re back! And guess what? They’re all assholes!

Team America: World Police

We must never use puppets for amusement again. The artform has been sufficiently perfected.

The Triplets of Belleville

We must never use CGI animation for amusement again, as the hand drawn realm still reigns king.

Mean Girls

High school movies can really suck. Two things that can improve them: a) an intelligent script that examines the animal nature of human psychology, and b) Lindsay Lohan’s sweet bajungas.

Motorcycle Diaries

Why not make a film about everyone’s favourite badass that portrays him as a slick, mischievous womanizer who loves lepers?

BEST SHOWS / PARTIES

Brave New Waves Anniversay w/ !!! / Barcelona Pavillion @ Sala Rossa, Montreal, March 27

Dance to the Underground w/ Grand Theft Bus @ Scherzo Pub, Kingston, April 15

I Love Neon w/ A Touch of Class @ SAT, Montreal, February 14

Mayor McCa w/ BA Johnston @ Grad Club, February

Beats Breaks and Culture w/ Manitoba, Jaga Jazzist, Harbourfront, July

The Blow w/ Barcelona Pavillion, Yacht @ Cinecycle, November

Medeski Martin & Wood @ Koolhaus, December 4

TOMMY DOUGLAS RIDES AGAIN

the prospect of school tomorrow just seems so banal after yesterday in ottawa. let me tell ya what happened last week at school: i aced a test and most everyone else failed, so the instructor dropped two assignments so that we could "understand the material" better. this was a basic music theory course. peops be gettin 100's on electronics tests and they still get bombed on this shit. so i just have to sit there all the time while this guy explains fucking major chords to people who just don't get it. these kids have a lot to learn. they're the children of urban market consumerism and coca cola.

i have a lot to learn too, but i'm getting closer to figuring it all out, after yesterday, in ottawa. the volume of daily sound is much quieter than it is on a usual day. my ears were overstretched from having been in headphones at high levels with loud sound all around you. the kind of stress that can put on your ears cannot go unchecked, but jesus, there are points at which your hearing shows its strengths. for instance, when you've got earpieces in and you're in a huge crowd, but you know quite accurately what you're getting onto disc.

having eaten nothing but a muffin at 9am, and having drank nothing but water and a glass of wine at 10, i'd trudged several k by the end of the march and daytime congregation. starting on the east end of the bridge at mackenzie/rideau in the morning, i saw a crowd of a 100 people gather as they waited for an early glimpse of bush's cavalcade as it sped towards a meeting with martin. from there, confederation park, where i ran into a lot of familiar faces (a number of them only from news clippings) and got some well known folks on the mic either through speeches or interviews. the march itself was the most orderly i'd ever seen, in no small part to the small group of organizers who managed to keep 10-15,000 people in a tight march for two hours. the main daytime march and hill gathering went on without a single arrest as far as i know.

i'd tell you what i got up to with the marijuana party on parliament hill, but it was too hazy to remember. all i can recall is a gathering after most of the crowd had recessed, a tight huddle of bodies about 80-100 thick with huge pot-leaf banners sticking high above them. i went over and saw an old serbian friend who may or may not have convinced me to do some legal or illegal things. soon, i could hear marc emery's voice through a small loudspeaker. some camera crew interviewed him and it was total amatuer night. you just can't allow your microphone to feedback into his. mabye you want people's ears to bleed, i dunno.

things go strange from there. i wander across the central spine of parliament hill (parliament hill with a spine? hahahahah, that'll be the day) as it readies itself for the vigil in three hours. i record the peace tower bells and drift around for a while. it starts to get cold and it's been over one hour since i've phoned my photographer, with whom i was supposed to be coordinating efforts. apparently, she went over to the conference centre where bush and harper met. i remember watching those people round the bend to cross a bridge and thinking it's not worth the price of someone else's equipment and my footage to go some place where there might be totally unnecessary trouble. kara, once at the barricades, tried to slip behind the riot police phalanx to find a vantage point. one cop came toward her, and she said "i have asthma, if you touch me you're fuckin liable". while one of his buddies continued to threaten her, the one coming towards her did something that probably would saved her ass if some shit went down. he shoved her into a doorway on another side of the building and told her to stay there. of course, she left and didn't get stuck behind police without media credentials.

some time was needed in the cock & lion ale pub, the best name for a bar that i've ever come across in my entire virile life. after some pints and a quick review of my first eighty minutes' worth of footage i headed back to the hill for the vigil, where more familiar media faces spoke (i've discluded the bloc from my documentary for obvious reasons.

called it an end to the recording day but continued to follow the show. i headed to catch the last movement of the piece, the final protest at the museum of civilization all the way over the bridge in hull, quebec. after a piss and a smoke (a right which i allowed myself despite my recently successful quitting) i ran into a kingston ex-pat who'd made it down for the one night only. a long march, and a small showdown, but no tear gass, no real violence to speak of, but plenty of civil disobedience.

by the time i'd made it back to the hotel, i'd had a meal in my stomach, and at least 10k on my body, not to mention several dB on my ears. my photographer had been stood up by her previously arranged internet date, so we went to look for this place a hippie told her about called "the elgin" that we determined never existed after another long bout of walking. we got back to the hotel and, of course, watched the news.

we're at a point in the life of the music industry at which a continually flowing stream of musicians hit a nerve with many on a daily scale. they riptide through the masses and travel far places without even leaving their home countries in many cases. everywhere, someone's heard of them and waiting for them to come to their town. the go! team should not need introduction at this moment, but they have yet to rock north american and therefore must be explained. things are generally taken too seriously in music, but the go! team defy the standard attitudes: neither "we're too bore to care" nor "wow, we're artsy" nor "we sound like this band meets this band while weilding a knife in bowie's dead family's graveyard" need apply to the go! team they're into fun, and that's their thing, so good for them, let's keep it coming.

deep dark united hit the scene from another angle altogether, but occupy the same kind of space. quite a number of bands could take some lessons from them. for one, music can be strange and fun at the same time, nor does it have to be danceable. it simply requires listening ears and seeing eyes. as much as we love to see fashion and culture as a part of music, the end result is how the song makes us feel. without the piece, there's nothing but style.

the fever has caught on for a lot of crowds and all these little "scenes" are popping up in all kindsa places. this, however, can be a slightly dangerous time. this crazy "indie" music will soon see some kind of saturation in the near future that will gnaw at its core (if we haven't already). there's nothing wrong with any of this, as at them moment it's totally containable. the abundance of groups does make for an overall above average health level amongst groups in the world of performed music. influences keep growing. each day is a new achievement in the recognition of culture as a vital form of life. but i can see that sometime soon, this little "indie" thing that blw up so big might have to readjust its course before it falls into the ocean.

my hope is that people like kaki king spearhead the moments of change in the coming years. this woman is gonna put a lot of people in business. she's already appeared on NPR and the cover an acoustic guitar mag you could easily find at the airport or 7-11, so a lot of people have at least glanced a her name.

THE PERPETUAL DIASPORA

my dad and i, on the way back from the cottage, listened to an interview with livia jaroka, a 29 year old former radio host and anthropologist who was recently elected to the european parliament as its first gypsy member (and one of the first gypsy politicans in europe altogether). me and my dad had a discussion about gypsy culture (which is often called "roma" culture, even though their heritage has nothing to do with rome and everything to do with india).

he told me all kinds of things about gypsies and how they operate, what sort of lifestyle they live and how they're perceived in europe. my dad grew up in transylvania, where gypsies made up a significant portion of the population, and from our conversation i learned of the following:

gypsies are incredibly intelligent people despite huge disadvantages. they don't read or write for the most part, because of their traditionally nomadic lifestyle, but mainly due to the extreme discrimination they have to deal with if they ever do go to school. my dad remembers that in school, he had three or four gypsy students in his class, but they were never referred to by their first names when the student addressed them. they were simply called "cigajn" which means something like "swindler" or more closely, "haggler". that kind of systematic depersonalization really discouraged them from sending their kids to school, so as a result, they have their own kind of intelligence borne of a very raw and gritty existance.

for instacne, gypsies are incredible metal smiths. my dad used to go buy pots and pans that they would make from scrap on tiny little anvils with tiny little hammers, and they would do it with such skill that it eclipsed any government issue communist factory trash.

gypsies are amazing musicians. for the longest time, what people around the world once thought of as hungarian and rumanian folk music was actually of 100% gypsy origin. their music is immensely dark and complex. few people can master the technique. what makes it even more amazing is that gypsy music had never been notated or written down until the composer bela bartok and his colleague zoltan kodaly travelled the countryside of transylvania and rumania to study workable methods of defining gypsy music. i recommend you listen to bartok's six string quartets for a feel of what gypsy music is like. it will change your notions of how you listen to music. it is incredibly challenging stuff. much of my family's musical history can be traced back to gypsy influence, when my grandfather as a child and adolescent lived next to a family of gypsies who would play music well into the night and influence his violin playing...django reinhardt, one of the world's greatest guitarists of all time, was a gypsy, after all.

despite all of the beauty of gypsy culture, they're treated like dirt. there used to be an expression when my dad grew up that, according to livia jaroka, is still common in hungary: "if you don't behave, the gypsies will come and take you away!"

it's going to continue and possibly get worse unless someone does something about it. under communism, things were better for gypsies, as the laws put a stop to open racism. the gypsies still had it rought back then, but now that the wall has fallen, and open racism is once again de rigeur again throughout most of europe, gypsies are seeing a new age of disclusion. they are hated and reviled. i'll admit that one would expect such a thing. after all, gypsies live a totally different life from white europeans. but they are amazing people with an ongoing story, and something has to change in the near future.

"yes," says my dad, "they were smelly and dirty. yes, they were so good at negotiating that it was easy to think you got swindled if you did business with them. yes, they were nomadic and we were established. but they're incredible people who deserve to be treated like any other european group. we all started out like gypsies."

IT'S LIKE THAT ZAPPA SONG...

"why do we do it?" asked one of our instructors once asked us on the first few days of classes. "we do it for the money. we're only in it for the money," he answered himself.

at that moment i couldn't totally understand what he meant. in fact, i was slighlty put off by it. i hadn't expected the school to be so...industry driven? however, a few months down the road, i can totally sympathize with this sentiment. this guy has been a sound editor for years, but he hasn't worked on anything you'd call a masterpiece. he had a really good gig on a popular canadian show in the 80's, but nothing too special. a string of unglorious but steady work was his lot. does he care? no, because, in the end, he lives like the king of his own world. he's been nominated for awards and he's a pretty happy guy who hasn't lost interest in the work itself, no matter how ridiculous.

it takes a fair bit of optminism and faith in the wayward youth of today to do his teaching job. kids walk in there everyday with no fuckin clue what it takes to break yourself into this kind of a world. some of these kids have never tasted an ounce of professionalism in their lives and they come into the school expecting service instead of education. the school is run like a business, and it's as cold as one. some people are definitely not cut out for it. and those who can't make it are the ones who expect, rather than attempt, the most.

i too, had a lot of expectations when i started there, and as much as i like to think i'm above all this bullshit, i have to remind myself, always, that i 've been granted all kinds of social and economical advantages from the get go. most of these kids didn't get that. i cannot hold them up to the same standards as i hold myself, and i must give them a chance before i consider them all a bunch of starchasers with their chichen-heads cut off.

* * *

there's a possibility i'm heading to ottawa to anounce my rejection of the bush agenda, although not specifically as a protestor. i'll be on assignment with the paper, assisting the photo editor with her work and maybe doing some second unit stuf (do they call it a second unit in photography? i know that's the film term). i certainly don't intend to do much more than the work i need to do, but there's no doubt i'll be acting in the spirit of protest. i won't be on the front of the lines with bullhorns like i was in 2003, but i'm sure i'll be going through some of the same emotions.

i must go to bed, as i have a sharp pain going up my shin bone, which i suspect is the result of the splinter i stepped on today that so sneakily jutted from my floor, waiting in cruel anticipation as my foot hovered over it. i had no tweezers so i had to remove it with a variety of techniques and tools, which might have been a mistake.

i should sand my floor. or maybe i just walk too much and need better shoes.

ODE TO GURV

i received an email earlier this week that contained a picture of the man in question, found by an unsuspecting seez on the queen's 2004 yearbook website. i have to express what profound luck i have stumbled upon in having met the gurv. when he ties one on, he's fearless.

i was bored as hell at the varsity newspaper party the other night. i was talking the same old introductory bullshit with people i wasn't terribly interested in meeting and within minutes, the course of action shifted dramatically. some very crucial elements entered the equation, the first being the unending supply of booze brought in by the editors, and the second being the arrival of the gurv and magdalicious, who'd just been given some attitude by the hip hop bitches they photographed for the paper. we were all ready to party at this point and let off a bit of steam, so we struck the booze hard as the party got louder. we ran into a british animator who so kindly took us out to the second floor balcony for a spliff with his adorable girlfriend.

the varsity happens to occupy the same building as the campus police. so when a cop parked his cruiser under the balcony, we figured we'd refrain from attracting any attention.

"NOT I!" said the gurv, who, within a minute of the cop's entrance to the building, began pissing off the balcony in the officer's wake on the sidewalk below. we made it known to the gurv that perhaps he should wait for the cop to go back to his car and drive away, just in case he wasn't the piss fetish type.

"NOT I!" said the gurv, who then redirected his goldren stream to the hood of the cruiser.

after a hearty piss, he turned to me and said "man...i gotta take off. i'm tired." and leave we did, with smiles on our faces.

the gurv has no recollection of this event, but i'd like to thank him for providing me with this memory that makes me laugh out loud when i think about it.

THINGS THAT ARE NOT REAL ARE NOT REAL

we've been hearing this word "hipster" for quite some time now as a means to describe a certain type of person. fine, but moreover, we're seeing a glorified anti-hero being made out of this character. everywhere you go, it's "hipster this hipster that! he's a hipster she's a hipster! are you a hipster? where do the hipsters hang out in this town?" it's starting to get sickening, and i'll tell you why: never once have i heard someone describe themselves as a hipster, yet this word is everywhere in white youth culture. it's a word that seems to have been flailed upon people so we can have yet another way to categorize human beings into little clumps of subculture, as if we were forms of bacteria. i'm sure there are people who would wish to be called hipsters, but they're too cowardly to ever step out of their slimy hides and actually call themselves hipsters out loud. cause that would be be so unhip, wouldn't it?

the word hip comes from "hepi", a word in an african langauge, (i read this in an article once, i forget from where. russel smith in the globe, maybe. he's into that whole thing.) and was brought to america by slaves so they could have a word that described something that was theirs and not anyone else's. somehow, the white people got a hold of this word and it evolved from "hepi" to "hep" to "hip". who the fuck really knows what it means, but it's on the same wavelength as the word "cool". we don't know exactly what it is, and we don't know how to describe it and its definition changes day to day. so in such an instance, we take all kinds of liberties with this concept, and next thing we know, beat poets and journalists write their definitions of the hipster identity in the 1950s like it was some crisis of identity that needed to be solved at once. let's see what they have to say:

"a hipster is anyone who can stand on any street corner in the world and successfully find some reefer by simply asking strangers." jack kerouac (paraphrased from a book i once read)

"like children, hipsters are fighting for the sweet, and their language is a set of subtle indications of their success or failure in the competition for pleasure. unstated but obvious is the social sense that there is not nearly enough sweet for everyone. and so the sweet goes only to the victor, the best, the most, the man who knows the most about how to find his energy and how not to lose it." norman mailer, "the white negro: superficial reflections on hipsters", 1957

i'll agree that there are people who exhibit these qualities, and good for them, but i wish i could find one. i personally have never seen a torontonian male with emo glasses and pinstriped pants score dope in nepal, nor have i ever seen a girl with a cabby hat and a 1950's professor jacket do the same. but i do agree that there are certain people who we assume have these qualities and abilities because of their ironic clothing, outrageous hair and oh-so-up-to-the-minute knowledge of the latest trends in fashion and music. i do agree that these people "fight for the sweet" but as a result, they have no more of an idea as to who they are than anyone else in this world. in my opinion, they're most likely lost in this sham of an identity and suffer from serious delusions about who they are and how they and others of similar ilk are supposed to act. if you ask me, they're stuck living in a territory of stereotypes, albeit a strange one with all kinds of complexities and ironies in it, but one that has very little to offer but pleasure and leisure to the bored young urban socialite. as a result, they forget what they set out to do in the first place - find the right energy to express themselves as individuals with original tastes and concerns - and tie themselves into the knot of delusion that goes along with self-aggrandizing faux hipsterdom.

with regards to what kerouac says, nothing could be further from the truth. a hipster is not someone who can score dope anywhere anytime. a hipster isn't even a person. a hipster doesn't exist, beacuse a hipster and hipness altogether are constructs of our social intermingling which only exposes our inability to see cultural movements as they are: amorphous and ever evolving, yet inextricably linked to history and politics.

WHISKEY IN THE JAR

my knowledge of the world comes extensively from a very limited framework. most of what i know in the world is contained within four places:

toronto, ontario
winnipeg, manitoba
kingston, ontario
montreal, quebec

yet i often speak for those who have lived in far off places and different planes of history. i think of life at other time periods, such as the second world war, for instance, or during the belle epoque. i like to think about where we are now as a species, as a civilization, and i wonder: is it better now? was it better then? or is it always just the same?

some things are better, for some people, but we have yet to come to the point in human history where we can say that 50% of our population was living happily. we're nowhere near it, and i wonder if in my lifetime i'll be able to look at statistics with optimism.

@ CINECYCLE, LAST SATURDAY

WE DON'T NEED NO INSTRUMENTATION

by guy stevos

photos by peter mohideen

did the kids come all the way to cinecycle in the cold to sit? look at those shameless, motionless chair dwellers. i bet they really just needed a good bangin' from the penis that is live music.

YACHT told them not to sit anymore. he lead by example, putting on a show rife with handkerchiefs and spastic freakouts.

not everyone joined him in the dance, but they all "got it" and dug the kid's message of hope. it was THE BARCELONA PAVILLION, however, that cranked things up to 12. a particularly jovial steve kado and his band of merry misfits walked the plank for twenty harrowing minutes of coldwater-flat-rock mayhem.



"how are you people gonna have fun when none of you people ever participate?"

who ever thought a little garage-like warehouse in the middle of an alley could get so hot! kids was sweatin, ya heaaaard me? they was up and at 'em by the time THE BLOW came on. she asked for the "steppers" to come forward, and forward they did march to the beat of familiar drum...from yacht's laptop!

"i'd like to make you nervous
i'd love to make you sweat
i'd love to cook you breakfast
the morning after"
- jet ski accidents

so many boys must have fallen in love with the heavenly khaela that night. "i-guess-i'm-just-one-a-those-girls-that-loves-the-shit-out-of-you-boyyyyyyy-whoooaaaaa" might be the height of indie girl r&b. i know i have a girl to think about in my lonely cold bed onthose low key saturday nights. khaela, canada loves you too!

what a show! what an environment! no stage! no live drums! why don't people do this more often?

WELCOME TO THE SHOW THAT NEVER ENDS

we here at the offices of guy stevos have sent our photographers to the white house to witness some of the festivities in the bush camp's post victory party.

as you can see, they're having a real hoot.

but what does life look like for the rest of us on this slowly blackening globe? guy stevos, like little punxatawny pete, has emerged from his hole. has he seen his own shadow? yes, but only under that of a much larger one. he looks up at the behemoth before him, blocking out the sun, and asks, "what, now, is my purpose in life?"

perhaps over the next few weeks, i may be able to begin to answer that question.

with love and respect,

guy stevos.

ps- pictures of my latest vacation:

LA VILLE INCONNUE

la ville inconnue, by edith piaf, which when translated into english, reads like so:

"in a strange town I love nothing. i wander in streets that are too long, almost endless, or get lost among the wharves and sidestreets or the empty boulevards. then between two houses i hear the racket of a long train crossing a bridge to nowhere. in a strange town, night and day, i wander like that lost dog. people pass by as if they wanted to get away from me, and have no time to smile...in a strange city when night comes I am afriad of these bare gray walls, afraid of this hotel, of the cold bed and the cruel morning that will waken me! i would like to sleep even through the day with my memories of love. in a strange town i think of you; but do you remember me - a little?"

i really need to start having sex again before this strange town ties my tubes.

in my dream last night, jack layton was cutting people's hair on the street for some kind of ndp promotional thing, and i made a funny joke: "hey jack, make sure everyone's parts are a little to the left!" he thought it was hilarious, and so did the reporters on the scene.

too bad i'm not so smooth in real life.

LYRICS TO KEEP YOUR DAY GOING

"i believe in the taste of wine as i do not step on a landmine"

- the hidden cameras, "i believe in the good life"

i've thought about this phrase a lot. the meaning is as clear as day from the get go, but i keep coming back to it.

in this world, in which we live an affluent life, we don't feel the need to kiss the ground everyday, and if all we did was bless our good fortunes all the time, we'd get nothing done. but every once in a while, we have to express joy at the fact that we're not in fear of being blown up everywhere we step.

so my next sip of wine will celebrate that fact.

A REASON TO SMILE

brian wilson will be playing at massey hall in a few months to play "smile", his long lost beach boys album. tickets go on sale tomorrow but they're too damn expensive for me...oh well, i didn't get to see it when it was in its prime anyway.

instead, i have a good smile of my own when i think about the latest slew of groups that are inextricably tied to the brian wilson sound:

the animal collective
the hidden cameras
devendra banhart
the microphones

what excites me tremedously: devendra and the animal colective will be playing in toronto one night after the other in november, and the sum total of ticket prices is still cheaper than the brian wilson show.

off to watch the last waltz, which i've been told is the best rockumentary of all time. i think im gonna make a film about the festival express, but instead of a documentary it'll be a fiction, and the cast will be totally kingston based. it'll be shot with 16mm NFB cameras and the sounds will all be recorded live, so y'all better get your shit together. the drugs will be real, and so will be the wild sex orgies. so here we go:

dance to the underground presents...
RIDIN' THAT TRAIN
a clarke mackey film

aaron guravich as robbie robertson
steve birek as rick danko
big steve mckay as levon helm
tony higgins as bob weir
billy holmes as phil lesh
mike sallot as jerry garcia
alison lang as janis joplin
paul hopson as buddy guy
megan harrison as sylvia tyson
jesse landen as ian tyson
and
the jack kerouac knapsack band as the flying burrito brothers

we also need some energetic performers to play the role of sha na na. who's down?

saw an old man almost get caught in the closing doors of the subway as he stepped off the platform. i was sitting right across from all this, and all i could envision was the train moving with him caught in the doors. "shit!" i said aloud as i almost sprung out of my chair. he managed to squeeze out from the vice grip, but only about a second before the train started moving. at first i thought he was an alcoholic, but it was soon clear that he had parkisons disease or something akin to it. the muscles in his face were lame and the expression in his eyes was hollow. his shouders hung low on his frame and his head even lower. his steps were taken carefully and he looked as if he were seconds waya from falling. i could only think of my late grandfather, who died on a new year's day of the same affliction.

there was a time when i was young, about four or five, and my grandfather took me for a walk in the park. he'd had the disease for about six or seven years at that point, so his motor skills and dexterity had substantially depleted by then. it was a real struggle for him to keep up with a youngster who wanted only to run and jump about. i remember running into a bog in my favourite park, and getting my shoes all muddied up. i'll never forget the look in his eyes when he finally caught up with me. even though his state of health at the time meant that his facial expressions could only yield limited tension, i could see in his eyes that he was afraid. he said something, most likely a reprimanding statement, but it was hard to tell what he said when he spoke, as his voice grew softer and his words sounded less intelligeable as each year passed by. he simply took me by the hand, sighed deeply and walked me home.

my mother got really angry with him, and never let him take me out alone again. she was concerned that his growing inability to keep up with the world around him was a dangerous problem to both him and her child.

so this all made me think: this man no doubt has a family. they'll probably never know that he almost got trapped in the subway doors this afternoon. he'll come home and who knows if he'll even be able to explain it to him. they'll think he'll still be capable of travelling alone and only strangers will be there to help him when something happens, and maybe it'll be too late.

as my stop came near, i could see the old man getting up to exit the train. he was standing at the wrong side of the car, so he'd have to turn around when we arrived at the stop. i kept a close eye on him, and made sure he got out ok, which he did, but slowly.

i hope he has someone to watch out for him when it gets really hard for him to move.

THE BIG PHASE SHIFT

as this summer moves forward with tremendous speed, i continue to look behind me. why do i do that? it's not easy to foget the past, especially when you're not 100% comfortable with your new living experience. don't get me wrong, life is good, and i hate talkin like a bitch. but i find myself real tired all the time. i think i'm still recovering from the crazy year i had. add to that the sensroy overload one goes through day in day out in the big city, and you've got one tired stevos.

should i be worried? i mean, it really affects my attitudes towards life, which are becoming more erratic than they've been before. i often say that i'm "emotionally neutral", but in this state i feel like shit half the time. i feel terribly undermotivated, unenthusiastic and overly pessimistic about everything. i worry about a whole slew of things that are so far beyond my control that they ain't worth fussin over, like the the future. and then there's those things i shouldn't worry about, like appearance and social mobility and all that bullshit toronto stuff that any level headed person, myself included, knows is bullshit. but i worry about those things too, irrationally.

i sleep plenty, i eat fine, i get a bit of exercise here and there...what's missing? i dunno...CFRC...a girlfriend...a band...the vast majority of the people i know...

but those parts of my life are distant from my present. they've long since left my grasp.

i suppose it's an adjustment thing. i guess i have to find something that makes me feel useful again. and i have to find some scene that i can be a part of. these things will take time.

perhaps my biggest problems are impatience and nostalgia. all i think about are the past and the future. for once in my life i've forgotten how to get get stuck in the present, and somehow, i'll relearn this in due time.

A DREAM

"i had a dream with you in it the other night, i had this really garrish wedding and you were my maid of honor, only i made you wear a really terrible pinkish orange chiffon thing with puffy sleeves, and you wore this really bright lipstick yet kept your shaggy face hair.  it was twisted, but you seemed to have a really good time."

hopefully, when the actual wedding happens i'll be one of the best men instead. but if i have t wear a dress and makeup, i'll shave...and yes, i'll have a good time.

president kennedy loved kids, they say.

john jr., who'd recently been turned on to some preschool slang, walked up to his daddy, pointed at him and smiled and exclaimed "poopoohead!"

john sr. says, with a bemused grin, "john jr, how dare you call the president of the united states a poopoohead!" everyone got a real kick out of it.

that's what i'm learning from watching television right now. the e! true hollywood version of television.

at moments like these, the question begs to be asked: does anyone need to spend the money to make such information digestible?

the answer: it isn't digestible at all. we really don't need to know how kennedy felt about children. it has little bearing over history. if he's remembered for actually doing things specifically for children, then fine, make note of that. but this is a president, and like any world leader, and we should be told of the footprint he made on his nation and the world, no some little backyard memory of mr. pressy laughin with his little boy. all we learn about him then is that "hey, he does things like a normal person would do em!"

do we really wanna hear that? no. everyone has a family life. if we wanna hear about family life, we can go read a biography written on his wife. we wanna hear about the fucked up cold war shit that we're not supposed to know.

i'm looking forward to not having television in my house, which i move into tomorrow. it's only been two months since the picture tube came back to my life after a good year of my desertion from it, and i;m proud to say i still hate it for the most part.

that's what happens when your computer, your television and your stepmom are in the same room.

oh well, at least i've got somethin to rant about today.

so how did it the votes tally in my family?

dad: green
me: green
step-sister: green
grandmother: liberal
step-mom: liberal
mom: liberal
sister: ndp

my sister really surprises me, and if anyone's met my sister, it'd surprise you too...in fact, i'm surprised she even voted, but good for her nonetheless! the conversation i had over the phone with her and my mom really did it for me:

STEVOS: so who'd she vote for?
DR. MOM: the NDP!!!
DR. STEVOS: the NDP??? my god! (aside) hey dad, she voted NDP!!!
MOM: she didn't even know the name of the candidate in the riding!
SIS (overheard in background): mom, i care more about the future of this country than someone's name!

good point!

*****

let's take a look at me and my dad's predictions, written shortly after the atlantic vote counts, and see how they stack up to the results (actuals in brackets):



LIBS 90 (135)

CONS 88 (96)

NDP 58 (22)

BLOC 70 (54)

GREEN 2 (0)

OTHER 0 (1)

the explanation for our deviations: we overestimated the success of the NDP in ontario and the bloc in quebec. we predicted something like 22 seats in ontario for the NDP, and they only walked off with 7.

what did we learn?

"there'll be one poll on june 28th that'll tell us the real story, and that'll be the federal election."
- stephen harper, 2004

CONVERSING THIS WEEKEND WITH PAUL AND HUGH AND STUFFY JAZZ MUSICIANS

*****

"so did ya get home ok?" he asks.

"sure, pops, thanks for the check in call," i tell him sarcastically. "how'd the rest of your night turn out?"

"shit fell apart after you left. remember that girl that was sittin beside me?"

"yup."

"well, we were talkin about somethin, probably an extension of the policitcal debate we were havin earlier, and i said somethin to her, don't remember what it was, but she ended up splashing her beer into my face."

"jesus!"

"so, in a knee jerk fashion, i take my beer and splash it in her face. so a whole group of people started yellin at me and i said somethin really rude to them, don't remember what, and they all left."

"well, what do you think you said?"

"to the group of people?"

"no, to the girl."

"unless it was somethin really lewd, it couldn't have been anythin that bad. we were havin a political debate for chrissakes, that was the whole reason for everyone being there."

"i suppose they won't invite you to the next one."

"well, fuck, i don't care if i've ruined it witht those people. they take things too seriously. i mean, c'mon, not wanting to vote for the green party doesn't warrant gettin beer thrown in my face."

*****

"hi terry, i'm taking photos from the varsity - "

"oh, no kiddin, eh? the varsity! great great! i was talkin to this one guy, what was his name...anyway, we've got a lot of events this summer, so we oughtta keep in touch."

"of course! anyway, do you mind if i get a photo of you? this press tent is such a poor location, can i get you in the sun?"

we walk to the open area and i get the most boring picture i've ever taken. i can see later on that he's got his instrument with him.

"oh! you've got your instrument with you? can i get a shot of you just holdin it or playin?"

"no", he replies resolutely, "i'm not gonna do that."

"no?"

"no, no way, no schtick, i don't do schtick."

hmm, interesting, it's like he wants to sabotage his career. what would he rather have as his photo in the paper? a picture of his half assed smile that people will ignore? or a picture of him with his instrument that might make people think "hmmm, jazz!" i tell ya, i didn't stick around too long for the show. and he looks very very small in his performance photo. i'm burdened by the fact that i had to waste real film on this prick.

i relate the story to hugh, who i run into on the street just minutes later.

"y'know," he says, " people in this city are ok, until you all of a sudden hit the toronto button and they lose their patience. but it's always over nothing!"

"jazz musicians in general, i think, have such an image problem. they're isolated human beings. they have little concept of a culture that goes beyond their little solos. the minute you ask to engage them in anything and they feel like it's showboating."

*****

it's late on the subway. the car is virtually empty, and only three people show up in the viewfinder of my camera, and they don't seem to care whatsoever. most of thwhat can be seen by my eye anyway are the bars and benches of the car itself. i'm more than likely not going to take a photo. i'd rather just play with the lens and certain settings to get a feel for the thing.

minutes after i put it back in the bag, a young guy about my age, obviously drunk (but probably no more than i am) walks up to me from behind and asks "yo, bla bla bla camera and shit?"

"what?"

"why are you pointin your camera at people and shit?"

"oh, i'm not takin any pictures, man, i'm just playin with the settings."

i guess it's a good enough explanation, since he walks off without showing any real sign of anger. in fact, he was fairly calm the whole time, only the slightest bit offended. but his perturbed demanour indicated tome that by holding the camera, i'd triggered his sense of justice. if i'd have said "yes, i've ben takin pictures just for the sake of it", i wonder how differently he'd have reacted to it.

*****

no matter what your purpose, taking pictures in public puts your motives under scrutiny, as if you're up to a completely dishonest activity. it's the act of looking itself that troubles people. looking someone unfamiliar in the eye can be dangerous, as it was in the animal kingdom, when eye contact meant intrusion. poining a camera at someone, or even in their environment, really puts them off their guard, as they feel defenseless to all the arresting qualities of a photograph. it's as if their presence in history shouldn't warrant documentation.

but get them in the right scenario, and they'll do cartwheels for your camera. funny how that works sometimes.

YEARS PASS

i kept a journal two summers ago when i was a housepainter. it was the first summer i'd ever lived out on my own and i was in the mood to document it. i guess it's no different than any period of my life since i turned 15, but this one wasn't fictionalized like my memoires of high school. i did not give myself an anagrammed pseudonym or hide my identity behind an invented character. i recently took the journal out of the notebook it's been kept in for the past two years, and read the first entry. it was written on a day not unlike this one. i remember it quite well, in fact, it was end of may/early june and i was only a couple weeks away from a series of changes that brought my life to where it is now. this is what i wrote, word for word:

"Walked by a place in Collins Bay, a fairly tall dike with lovely wild flowers peeking through the grass and weeds. I figured a river was behind it; I was surprised to see railroad tracks.

I made sure to take a good look at the surroundings, so that when I make my next train trip to Kingston from Toronto, I'll pass by it and say 'Hey, I was there on such and such day thinking about what I would think when I see the place the next time I head by on the train.'

It's like staring yourself in the face sometime in the future.

There I'll be, standing in my painting clothes with my canvassing notebook in my hands, saying to myself, 'So you stood here once...who cares.'"

i remember writing it with some sense that what i'd experienced was some kind of rift-in-time moment, the kind of realization when you recognize that in the future, no matter who you aturn out to be, you'll always be the same person you once were. my cynicism at the time, however, brought on by my serious doubts about my place in the world, prompted me to write the final words which, in retropsect, was a deliberate attempt to sabotage my own wonderment. i remember feeling really excited about my little exercise in self-reflexivity, but once i'd gotten to the end of my journal entry, i remember thinking "you're not supposed to feel wonderment and excitement about anything." so i shat on it without thinking twice.

i'll never forget that afternoon, and i'm not sure why. i still watch for that spot when i'm on the train and i still picture myself in that paint-stained uniform, staring at myself on the train. so on the dike i'm imagining my future and on the train i'm conguring up my past. perhaps i have not been able to separate the moments from one another. i always felt the urge to put this into a script somehow. it'd be the beginning of a movie about a young guy and his pivotal moments. this would be the opening scene, in which the young guy would approach the tracks and see a train go buy, and a scene of himself on the train in the future would be edited into the larger scene so that both moments looked as if they were happening simultaneously. the older version of himself would be on his way to some important conference, and the rest of the movie would sporadically jump back and forth through time to tell the story of two or three really important years of his life. the movie will have no soundtrack and will have no sex in it.

EVER WONDER WHY DADAISTS LOVE UMBRELLAS?

i read an article this morning about jandek, an "outsider" musician and recent subject of a doc entitled jandek on corwood, which i will go see on sunday at the NFB. i'd like to get a hold of this gary gold guy, if he still resides in toronto i'd like to have him on my new radio show in the coming weeks to discuss the film and jandek himself. i'd also like to see how he feels about "outsider" music. does he think the term appropriatly represents jandek and other musicians associated with the genre, like daniel johnston and the langley schools music project?

i suppose you could find it surprising that someone like jandek renders himself so reclusive. he's apparently never played live or made public appearances as jandek. he's only consented to a couple of official interviews. it cannot be confirmed that the pictures of the young man which accompany his albums are photos of himself. but then again, if you consider the fact that the beatles stopped playing live after '66 and refrained from public appearances so vehemently, it makes a lot of sense.

we know how much reverence people have for their favourite artists. we've seen it go to excess time and time again. a guy like jandek, i suppose, feels that there's no need for such overwhelming adulation. perhaps he feels that any artist is at risk to the terrorism of rabid fandom, so he chooses to not to partake in any activity that could jeopardize his love of making music. after all, artists want their work to stand alone, and it's more often than not the case that an artist's public image taints the way people receive them. i'm sure john lennon had desires like those of jandek on a daily basis.

i can certainly understand the temptation to drive yourself into obscurity. having played in FUN! there were moments when i was a bit upset about the positive response. people loved us and liked to tell us that as much as possible. being praised can often be torturous, and you can't really understand why. i always felt that after a set, i just wanted to blend in and relax, but often it feels like an assault on your nerves when one person after the other approaches you right then and there. there's a tranquility after you'v played that you don't want to lose, but you can get the feeling that no one lets you have it to yourself, so you grow resentful of the people who love you.

but without the blatant approval, you'd have no idea what kind of an effect your music has on people. there are some of us who don't care what others think, but everyone has some inclination to enrich their surroundings with their life's work. when their art is recognized as beneficial to someone's consciousness or instrumental in the growth of a certain culture, the artist likes to know that.

the truth is, when you look back on it, it's far better to have the knowledge that what you've done has bettered someone's life. to everyone who ever said "stevo, that show was fuckin awesome! you guys are amazing!" i 'll always be grateful for it.

perhaps what satisfies jandek is the fact that despite his obscurity and reclusivity, people still mail him requests for his albums. that's got to make you feel like your work means something.

it's amazing how you can get all doom and gloom when your hands are idle. you play strange games in your head.

you tell yourself you're suffering while all the while you know you're nowhere near suffering. time goes much slower than you're used to. you feel like things will never pick up and you start to get irrational...

but you stumble onto something that turns it all around again and you find yourself saying "why do i gotta worry so much all the time?"

it feels so much better to get back to something i love to do. i'll be starting monday at CIUT 89.5 with a two hour tech spot and then a gig hosting an hour of music. i've also got the rest of the week to saturate my brain with various activities around the station.

"i liked you from the minute you walked in here," said the programming director ken stowar. "you just get a flow off someone when you meet them, and your demeanor and eagerness made for a good flow."

that was something i needed to hear quite badly. it's also nice to see that he has enough faith in my abilities that he's willing to try me out so quickly without having seen any real evidence of my previous work. much thanks is owed to good people like ken stowar, who show that you can still trust someone's word in these highly suspicious times.

i met a girl at the station who wants me to help her with photography at the u of t's varsity newspaper. she's 29 and has a 9 year old daughter, which surprises me since she looks not a whole lot older than myself. she's very cheery and sweet. i'm not sure if she's a single mother but if she is, she's accomplished quite the feat. i admire any woman who has a child at a young age and raises them on their own. she's already offered me some kind of a cover assignment, without having seen any of my photos. the assignment will have me taking photos of the election riding's party candidates. i figure the challenge is not taking the photo itself but merel being in the same room with a number of candidate i might automatically dislike because of their party affilliation.

she wants me to come with her this weekend while she covers north by northeast. i haven't been to a city wide indie music fest since 1999, when i attended winnipeg's corefest in its final year. although held in multiple venues, the main site of festival was on garbage hill, a man-made slope in the middle of the city's industrial district by the airport. a number of parties were held there during the rave days, and the site was used as the setting for the post-apocalyptic rave in noam gonick's hello happy! the place is amazing in the hours just before sunset, the perfect spot for a summer festival. the hill is not too huge, has some nice greenery here and there, and offers you a nice view of the whole city, as it's the most elevated point in winnipeg. i remember we went there to see elevator, but they didn't show up so we got treated to the political hip hop of fermented reptile and the beatboxing/feestyling/car jumping high jinx of mood ruff. what a day that was...

MEMORIES CAN'T WAIT

it wasn't too long ago i had two incomes that afforded me all the luxuries a 22 year old kid could want. making way more than i needed to get by each month, i was left with a vastly disposable income after paying housing costs and buying groceries. after a year of buying many lunches, drinking cup after cup at any cafe of my choosing, buying dope whenever i wanted, covering my friends when they couldn't afford door charge and drinks, taking trips out of town on a whim, treating myself and a friend or two to dinner whenevr i felt the urge, even investing in small business transactions and financial risks, all of these things have lessened my ability to save money and manageme finances (despite the fact that i successfully handled $100,000 of someone else's money in one of my jobs). while i regret none of my indulgences, i could have learned a few more things about fiscal responsibility.

it wasn't too long ago that i found myself as a mover and shaker in my little scene. i was well known, loved by the vast majority of those around me, i never hesitated to either join or start the party at every opportunity. i could look around and see people i knew from all walks of the community at every turn. all my endeavours were recognized by my peers as something worthwhile, something that made thier lives more enjoyable. while i worked my hardest, i ensured that my presence in the surrounding social environment was realized to its maximum potential. but i tell ya, i could have prepared better for the time when those things ceased to be,. i realize now that i'd forgotten what the view was like from within the sea of faces.

i find myself now wondering what reason i have to even think about what now only resides in my own memory and that of those i lived with.

in recent conversation with my ex-girlfriend, we'd been discussing the emotional realm of childhood memories. i'd been drawn to tell a story about one of my earliest recollections: i was about 3 or 4, and my folks and i went to some place known to me, even to this day, only as "bob's place", some cottage near a resort area in the killarnies. i've never been back and for the life of me, i have no clue where this place is and my parents probably don't remember how to get there, so for all the good it can do me, it's really just someplace within my head.

i remember being on the shore of a lake, in a bay, leaning forward with both hands on the hull of an upturned fishing boat. jumping up the keel of the boat was a little green frog, hopping at quick intervals. the whole episode lasted only a few seconds, but i remember my fascination and joy at watching this tiny frog leap up the boat. i remember my mother standing behind me saying "look, isn't that something?" what a marvelous thing it was to witness. i can only express in tears how it felt to experience the joy of that simple moment, when nothing mattered but life itself and the precious relationship we have with our surroundings.

if i were condemned to a psychological limbo and was given only one memory to relive for eternity, it would be this one. i cannot remember ever again having felt that happy and content with life. i've had moments that in certain contexts seemed highly liberating and exceptionally wonderful, but that memory of the frog cannot be overtaken. that seemingly insignificant and brief period of time was the best moment of my life.

why? because it was not a moment i had to fight for. it was simply given to me by nature. all i had to do was watch it happen. everything else since then was wrought from the daily struggle we endure to make ourselves happy. the older we get, the more imbued we are with stress and doubt, so we have to work to make ourselves happy again. we are disrupted by our fear of the worst that can happen, and thus, we are always stand on guard.

i don't blame us for doing so. we live in a world where simplicty and meaning are hidden by all the walls that we've built around the notions of human experience. we rarely have the opportunity to see things as they exist behind the curtains of our sophistication.

i regret nothing. i've never in my life expected anything to make me happier than some of those peaceful childhood moments. nor do i consider it resignation when i don't think i'll ever achieve that kind of fullfillment again. but my life is absent of continued horror and pain, and the hardships i've endured have been solved by my soundness of mind and spirit. a great number of people wish for such luck.

when you think about how many people have lived in human history, and take into account what you know about slavery, war, famine, and other disasters of human existence, it's not far fetched to think that the vast majority of souls lived tormented lives that they wished daily were not their own.

i long for the day that we can experience what it once meant to be human, long before our times, eons ago, when everyday one could see themselves as a part of the soil they walked on and the air they breathed. we've abstracted our closeness to nature and we have little knowledge that being human means to a great extent living in cooperation with our surroundings.

but i myself cannot make such things happen. i can only hope to work with countless others to ensure that those alive many generations down the line won't have to see frogs and millions of other creatures go extinct.

in the meantime, i say fuck finding a "job" for the moment. i'd rather work for free on something much larger than myself and my pocketbook while i have the chance. we the affluent youth live in the prime conditions to give ourselves to the betterment of the world we share with over 6 billion other people. we'll all die within the next century, every one of us, but perhaps if we work hard enough such death will be more bearable than it's been over previous centuries.

"i'm not here sellin hamburgers," says chad kroeger, "i'm just doin this to promote responsible downloading."

yes, that's right, mr. nickleback has teamed up in a promotional deal with mcdonald's and sony that offers free downloads with purchase of a big mac.

i'm thoroughly unconvinced.

no, chad, i DON'T want that supersized, you talentless hack.

PROMISE KEPT

i'm surprised. this morning, i awoke early without hesitation to fulfill my promise to you out there and myself that i'd go and get involved with the green party.

immediately upon arrival at pape subway station on the danforht line, 8am, i was greeted by an eager young campaign assistant who was excited to hear that i came all the way from eglinton-lawrence to see jim harris in action. right away, i was called upon to pass out the latest leaflet from the green party of canada, and i gladly obliged.

news cameras caught me and jim discussing his radio spot yesterday in kitchener-waterloo, and while he was more than sportsmanlike about 570news' atrocious media conduct, he agreed quite sincerely with my criticism of the broadcast. CPAC had the opportunity to hear the words of another young green enthusiast named rob:

"i don't call it democracy," he said, referring to the current state of canadian politics, "right now i call it 'demockery'!" he exclaimed to a bemused jim harris, who says he'll have to use that in the future.

i met a colleague of jim's named paul charbonneau, a member of the toronto-danforth electoral district association and green party candidate in scarborough-guildwood (although he lives in danforth). he's been in the community for a long time and claims to be friends with both jack layton and dennis mills...he's courageous for admitting those things!

he noticed me taking photos and asked if i'd be willing to help out with more photography, perhaps some for for the website.

would i?

you see, it's that easy, provided you have candidates who can promote at street level and don't have to wade through an army of reporters and campaign entourage to share points of view with the voting public. i was really struck by their willingness to converse with people openly and without the benefit of PR walls.

i agree with rob about the state of "demockery", but we can still count on people to explore these small venues of access that can take us in different directions.

a message to all politicians: what are you afraid of? no more baby kissing, non-committal hand shakes and nodding along. start engaging in public dialogue with your people, then maybe we'll start to get involved. wouldn't it make for a more active society if we gave you more than just a vote, but our time as well?

we want to see that you're willing to put in the time for us first.

WE NEED NEW POLICY

i heard jim harris, leader of the federal green party, today on 570 news, a kitchener-waterloo radio station owned by rogers communications (i tuned in online of course from my shady toronto enclave). i can't remember the name of show, but it's supposedly a news/talk gig with "glenn and gary: two guys on the radio". it was somethin' else, let me tell ya.

the lead in was laughable:

"hey glenn or [gary, i can't remember which one of this rosencrantz and guildenstern pair was which] i just read that this guy jim harris is a management consultant and co-author of '100 best businesses to work for in canada'. i mean, wow, this definitely changes the stereotype in my mind that i had about the green party."

"ya, i thought they were all make-your-own-granola sunflower dress wearin types yknow?"

"no, i mean these guys are not the natural law party or the rhinocerous party! we're dealin with a serious bunch here!"

well, shit, i mean, really? they're serious?

c'mon, wake up already! you're a news man, yet you have no idea what's going in the world beyond your happy whacky studio environment.

the greens in germany are part of a coalition government that runs the country with the SDP. ralph nader ran in the 2000 US elections as green party candidate with a national support base. in canada, the party represents about 800,000 people's voting preference, as recently stated by the latest ipsos-reid poll.

where have you been, glenn and gary, while all this has been going on?

they gave him 6 minutes on the phone, called him "jimmy" and went through a series of questions that barely skimmed the surface. no questions about his platform (only one about his disapproval of the expansion of a highway in the area, met with stern cynicism and condecension in the hosts' tone of voice). no questions about the values of the green party and what they represent in current politics. gems like this one, however, stood out:

"so jimmy, you're business consultant. how come you're not a liberal or a conservative?"

tops to jim, however, for pushing as much as he could. his answer?

"i used to be a member of the PC party until i realized that a species goes extinct every 25 minutes around the world. i used to think that reduction of government debt was the main issue. but that can be corrected by help from economists. the debt we owe the earth, however, requires a huige change." he also made note that while 6% of national support seems little in compariosn to the 30odd% the liberals and conservatives have, the NDP elected 9 MPs in 1993 with 9% or popular approval.

the weather and traffic were reported twice, before and after the interview, and there was no followup discussion. jim harris, in probably one of his few opportunities to appear on a mainstream news outlet, was pushed aside...to make room for what? the latest information on gridlock? traffic accidents?

(maybe at this point we should all direct our attention towards the party's policy on this matter regarding walkable communities, rail rescue and public transit.)

i'm so sick of this marginalization of a major national party. one of the reasons i'm voting for them has to do with their proposed limitations on broadcast ownership. maybe then we don't have to cringe whenever we turn on the radio. stations like 570 news, owned by rogers communications, are so prevalent within this country that there's no proper recourse to provide adequate counter coverage. programming is all mandated from a head office and timed and scripted without care for the issues. it's like handling a baby with a machine.

it's time we start investing in the quality and conviction of community-based media and oust clown-puppets like gelnn and gary from the control rooms of this nation.

i'd like to see what jim harris has to say about today's interview. i'm going to go see him tomorrow as he greets subway riders at pape station on the danforth line. it'll be an early rise for me, but hey, i spent the last 8 months getting used to losing sleep over the media.

THE NEW WAVE

today he's made a decision: no more talk without participation. no more opinions without experience. guy stevos is going to join the green party.

he's filled out the online application form for SHEL GOLDSTEIN'S campaign in the toronto riding of eglinton-lawrence. while he anxiously awaits a phone call, he imagines what it'd be like donning the nametag gallantly walking the streets campaiging for political reform. he'll move out of this riding only three days after the election, but he figures he might do one last (and first) thing for this part of town.

it's not gonna be an easy victory, that is if there is one at all. despite the amount of goldstein signs already present in his neighbourhood, he knows that they represent only a small slice of the pie. if all this "silent majority" crap is true, he's bracing himself for a real let down.

but hey, things are changing! the globe and the star have all given the greens a chance. they're making a bit of a fuss about leader jim harris being excluded from the global television debates.

which brings him to his next point. guy stevos would like to remind the execs at can-west, that damned asper family who promoted the status quo to his high school graduating class at convocation, that the green party is a major national party whose issues are by no means from the fringe. upon examination of their platform, anyone can tell you that their ideals are borne not out of lofty ambitions but mainstream goals.

"well, we'll see how they do this year at the polls and then we'll give 'em a chance." good god! the party now fields candidates in all ridings. they expect over 1 million votes and four seats. so why not let them speak to the public? why not let them expose this trash system for what it is? why not let them confront these issues head on? lord knows they can't do that in parliament at the moment. you're not oging to lose ratings by having the green party up there with paulbearer martin and step-on harper. if anything, you'll arouse some curiosity. voters are bored with the same old faces, same old problems.

guy stevos thinks it's possible to get a green presence in the house this election. he pleads to the rest of you disillusioned youth to not only go to the polls with a green mind, but to assist this party with the sweat of your brow...if it's your bag, of course.

GO GREEN. we're lookin at a new wave of politics.

AFTER THE GOLDRUSH

there's been a goldrush. somewhere up in god's country, a pristine place they call untouched nature (never mind it's been touched enough to have gold extracted from its depths). it's a frontier they say, it's a new land we're gonna build on, and we're only just getting started. and you can go up there and propel yourself to new heights. just get your things together and find the right spot and the world is yours.

but you get there, and there's no gold, at least no gold you can get a hold of yourself. if you want any part in it whatsoever, you've got to work for someone else, someone in a much more powerful position than yourself who's been there from early on. you'd be lucky if you get to share the slightest morsel of that gold, even though you've worked so damn hard and given up everything for the promise. but it's all been established.

you've come a long way just to figure that out, and as you see yourself diggin holes in the ground for someone else, you wish that it never had to be like this, that you and everyone else never had to be so enthralled by the idea of gold in the first place.