In other words...

I've been telling and re-telling the weekend war stories to people who want to hear about that sort of thing. The band played two markedly different shows and I think it's worth sharing.

The Boy show at the Horseshoe on Saturday night was absolutely fantastic. So many people came out to support us and it did nothing but feed us and make us more determined than ever to conquer the world. The show was one of the best I've ever played. I can't speak for the others, but I was proud of them. In fact, I've never been more proud of what those three guys and I did on stage Saturday night. And it's a feeling I want to have again and again.

On Sunday night we played in Brantford. There were a few differences. First, there were @240 less people at the show. The organizers (although really nice guys) suffered from an attack of dreaming too big (been there, done that) and lack of experience. It was a charity event for St. Leonard's, but they just couldn't get folks interested enough. So, we played to 15 people (including the two sound guys, the two organizers and one or two of the other bands). But rather than screw around, we rocked the shit out of the place. We played like were at Wembley stadium (and it kind of sounded like we were, because the room was so big and there was so much delay on the sound!) That also felt really damned good. To just play music and not care who was listening. No talk of record lables or management people. We just had a good time and we played with everything we had. And the tiny crowd that was there, was riveted. We played for an hour and the only place any of them went was to the back of the room to get a drink and then back to their seats to watch us rock.

The show was not without its charms. A fog machine, three head wounds (Styx cracked his head on the giant tv that was above his drum kit and Glenn smashed his skull on my ocular cavity/forehead area in a crazy head-butting incident), a peculiar thrust stage (I felt a bit like Derek Zoolander) and some very, very white versions of a few Bob Marley tunes that The Mink sang while we covered for Glenn breaking a guitar string. Anyway, I've tried to capture the essence of the evening in a few haiku poems. Enjoy.

The fog rolls past us
He kisses my head sharply
With an Irish bonk

Solitary souls
Stand fast with awe and new love
For the goose-egged rock

The readiness is all

"If it be now, 'tis not to come;
if it be not to come, it will be now;
if it be not now, yet it will come.
The readiness is all."

I don't like being baffled. It bothers me. I like to think I'm intelligent and thoughtful and compassionate. However, the more I think about it, I realize this isn't the case. I think it's because I'm very, very close to what I want. Success as an actor or a musician. Success as a man in a relationship with a woman. Success and recognition from my peers and all those I hold in high regard. And it's equal parts terrifying, exhilarating and frustrating.

That quote up there used to baffle me. Part of it still does. I studied a great deal of Shakespeare in school. I have a passion for it. It's some of the richest examples of our language and 2/3 of the population can't understand it. And my twisted brain enjoys taking that language puzzle and making it crystal clear for all to see and hear. We had to do an exercise in school. It was to roughly translate EVERY line of Richard III. I still use the technique, because I like to know what I'm talking about. But it's hard, sometimes. And this passage used to baffle me. Because it can me so many things, I suppose. There's so many contexts. But this is the one that finally made sense to me.

If it's happening to you this very minute, then it's not something to look forward to;
If you don't think it's going to happen, it's bound to happen immediately;
If this wasn't your day, there's another one tomorrow.
Just be prepared, son. Be ready.

And that's my question. How do you ever know when you're ready? I thought I wanted kids, but then I see my roommates, with their two little kids and I think, "Dear God, I'm not ready for that! I don't have the energy, I don't have the patience, I don't have the understanding." I think I'm ready to lead this band into the lights of fame and fortune and then I sing a song at the Horseshoe and sound like Cher without her voice correction machine (think somewhere between Cookie Monster and William Hung.) I think about marriage, but then I stop and say, "Can I live in the same space as someone for the rest of my life, for every waking moment of the day? Won't I kill that person? Won't they kill me?"

Every time I think I'm ready for something, Life seems to notice and knock me down a peg. On one level, I'm ok with that. I don't want to get arrogant or pretentious. But I would like to have a few certainties in life. I'd like to know I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing. And I'd like to know that I'm doing it with the right people. I know that sounds hokey, but you have to ask yourself that question when you're lying awake in bed at 4am, stomach rumbling because you've eaten Kraft Dinner for the third straight night (about 9 hours ago) and you're wondering which company will call today to try and draw blood from the stone that you call a bank account (with -$21.37 in it).

I understand 'be ready'. I understand that. But there's only so long that you can stand and wait for the train before you begin to wonder if you've mixed the schedules up, or if you're at the wrong damned station.

And so, I write this. On the off chance that Fate or God or Yaweh or Buddha or the Great Turtle or Steven Spielberg or Record Label Bigshots read personal journals.

I'm here.
I'm going to make mistakes - I know this now.
But, I'm ready.
I'm ready now.

I'm Out of Clever Things to Say

And that's why I haven't made a post in a while. My apologies to anyone out there who looks forward to my diatribes on our world, our society and our nature. But now, I'm back.

Part of the reason for my silence is that I'm written out. I've got no goddamned idea how Timothy Findley (one of my favourite authors) managed to keep a diary/journal AND work tirelessly on a book or two day in, day out. Maybe that's why so many of the great authors are drunks or opiate freaks. You need something to distort your mind and the concept of time.

You see, three of the last four years, my good friend Adam Sikora & I have written a novel. Not your usual, patient, arduous process, mind you. We wrote a novel in 72 hours. Three times. (That's a total of 216 hours for you math geeks out there - I don't know how many minutes, but it's probably a lame choral lyric in Rent - btw, the movie of that musical is coming out and I couldn't be less excited - making it into a movie won't help. As my friend Suresh is fond of saying - about our less than sparkling production of Guys & Dolls, but also applicable to any variation of Rent - "You can't polish a turd." Too true, too true.)

Anyway, the contest is based out of BC. You have three days - from 0 hundred hours on Saturday am (or Friday midnight, as we call it) until 23:59 on Monday - of the labour day weekend to create your masterpiece. It's the honour system. So, there's certainly a degree of cheating involved. You can have the skeleton or structure of the story firmly in place. You can name your characters. You can stock the fridge with Pepsi (Adam & I consumed 16 during the course of this years novel). You just can't write one word of the novel until the appointed hour.

So how does the adjudication process work? Good question. A panel of 10 or 15 writers all read the novels. And if the majority of them agree that 'I couldn't have written this in a week, let alone 3 days', they toss it out of the competition. For example - some joker sent in a 2200 page manuscript last year. Unless he was writing stream of consciouness and had some really good crystal meth, i don't see how it's doable. So, they disqualified him.

Certainly it's flawed. But it's a load of fun. And it's nice to accomplish something. Because all of my friends (myself included) are world class procrastinators. We talk a great game and we're always 'working' on a screenplay or a novel or a film, but nothing ever materializes. In this competition, you're forced to have a product. It's usually flawed and rough, but you can always polish that later. And two out our three offerings are really quite good. Not Yeats or Joyce or Conrad, but thoroughly engaging literature. Our first attempt wasn't bad either, but it's funny how when you read it and you come to the 3/4 mark of the story, you see the desperation set in. It's not as well crafted as the other two. I think I may just post them up here soon and you can all read for yourselves if you have the time.

Anyway, that's my lame excuse for not posting recently. I just didn't have the words, words, words.