REJOICE PUNK ROCKERS AND ARTSY FARTSIES!

Yesterday, December 14th, at 7pm, Mark and Hope had their baby! A rockin 5 1/2lb baby girl Rosa! Rosa Rosa Surfer Rosa! Hope is doing pretty good and Mark performed admirably in there! Send out your love vibes people! Send out your love!

Roses for Rosa.

FEEDBACK: TONING FOR THE SONICALLY DISTORTED
For centuries, people from all around the globe have practiced the art of toning, or intoning. This meditation style practice involves everything from the deep and mysterious chanting of Tibetan monks, to the soft hummings of various practioners of the healing arts as they attempt to realign your out of synch body-mind connection. Beginning from the understandable belief that the sound of the voice is a powerful force (easily demonstrated by trying out various ways of saying 'fuck you' to people and observing their various raeactions), toning works with the philosophy that just as electro-magnetic vibrations impact the emotional and physical world we live in, so too does one's voice. Ipso facto -- the more harsh the sound, the more sonically disturbed our environ can be.

Straightforward enough, yes?

But what if you're one of those that simply doesn't like things quite and calm? What if you're one of those deranged and unique people who like it loud? Like it distorted? Like it a chaotic and noisey?

I have come to find that this basic principle of toning can be practiced in a way more conducive for those, like myself, who find distortion, white noise, and feedback to be the element that soothes most emphatically.

Take your average evening at home, after the kids are asleep, and you are confronted with a veritable mountain of exams to mark. The formula to conquer this mountain is simple -- two parts Jesus and Mary Chain, one part Pixies, two parts Husker Du and, finally, if the work still isn't done, three parts Iggy and the Stooges/ Sex Pistols/ John Coltrane in equal proportion. Mix with red wine and VOILA! Work done, wine gone, good night's sleep ahead.

This is a tried and true method. Back in the day, when I first stated university and the workload seemed more motherlode than cartload, I tried the relaxation method -- quiet music, quiet space, quiet time. And I fell asleep. Thinking it was exhaustion, I tried coffee, but all that made me do was go to the can more often. I tried working in the daytime, but that just lead to afternoon catnaps. That's when I realized the problem -- it's too damn quiet! My mind was raging, but my surroundings were dead. And so, in a moment of epiphany I came to my senses and jammed Barbed Wire Kisses into the ol' boom box and the paper was flying like trees out the nether end of a chipper on a June afternoon in Northern New Brunswick.

Frank Black, I'm sending you my undergrad degree. And Bob Mould, you can have my Masters.

You see, I am Sonically Distorted. I like the monks, don't get me wrong, but they have their place -- bedtime. But when it comes to working and creativity, only one thing will do for this Twisted Feedback Machine -- raunch and roll, squeeling saxaphones, and notes that defy the music stave. Oh yes my friends, there is life in the noise off the scale, and they are the notes of the mind driven by distortion.

I've been spending time reading other people's blogs (Eric Hill, James MacGregor, John Born, Biff Mitchell, Phil Clark), and I have to admit that I am genuinely impressed by people's desire to voice themselves in words, to live their own lives vicariously online, and to out their inner monologue. I feel, sometimes, that I am living in the greatest time ever -- that despite all the calamity of the world, the curse 'may you live in interesting times' is ever so right, and true, and good. You folks are awesome -- are true inspiration. Thanks for being you.

Mephisto came to life, threw
his magic down, pistons
cracking out alchemy and

filled a theatre
with a lifetime of hauntings in
one solid night

(Photo credit -- Suzanne Archibald)

THINGS NO ONE KNOWS ABOUT MY FRIENDS (AND MAYBE NEVER SHOULD, BUT OH WELL)

1. LoMo has a parasite in her brain that she feeds by drinking gravy from the boat when no one's looking
2. JoBo has a dog fetish -- not that dogs get his rocks off, but he really does have a dog named fetish which nobody is allowed to see because jb likes it that way
3. JaMa didn't really shave his legs for Hallowe'en, they're like that from September - April... don't ask me why or how I know
4.ErHi is actually OLDER than he's telling us --ALOT older, and he won't ever tell the truth because the rest of us with receeding hairlines hate him enough already as is
5. MiBe is a Russian spy, and that's all I'm saying about that... comrades
6. JoGa, as much as she does a superb job hiding it behind that sheen of dreaminess, actually is a real, sure-as-shootin WITCH, capable of immense feats and conjurer of many a powerful spell
7. MaMa did not spend her childhood in Europe, as she is want to tell us, but in South America where she learned the ancient arts of Crocodile Wrestling and Shamsnistic VooDoo -- both of which she still practices, only now by a different name
8. KaWa is the Queen of the Universe (though anyone who really knows her is already aware of this, even if it's only subconsciously)
9. FaMa once scaled a mountain, bareback tamed a Camel, conquered a concubine and discovered a new line of Homo Sapien -- on the same day, all before tea-time
10. MaBr has no secrets

THE ONLY FIVE THINGS WORTH KNOWING ABOUT ME

1. My family is #1
2. Teaching, speaking, music & poetry are art & alchemy to me
3. The world as I live it each moment
4. I try my very best, always pouring my whole person into everything
5. There is no #5

The body of Toni Onley
VANCOUVER – The body of Vancouver artist Toni Onley has been recovered nearly three months after his plane crashed into the Fraser River, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police reported Wednesday.

Grim landscape, a reaping of the sun
set out on the canvass. He’s looking into the sun, nose
scooping across the water, the light

blinds him but he figures it
for vision and just

as he’s about to touch the godhead, or
a revelation more real than
it is art, it’s

over, a wall of river
splashing into the cockpit
like paint – crimson, azure,

overpowering.

Mephisto comes alive tomorrow evening, a gargoyle hatched from the roof of Memorial Hall, a daemon unleashed onto the suspicious public, an awakening for all those who have ears to hear the truth.

Prepare yourselves mortals. Be ready for the spirit to be unleashed. Too long has he been chained, too long hidden from sight.

This coming night he will sing and rage and roar and howl. Come and feel the steam.

Dali in the dark
They’re alive,
they’re awake,
while the rest of the world is asleep.
T. Waits

On Main, sometime
after dark, the clack and roll

of tructs on pavement starts. These
are the Athletes, Prodigies
of ollies and half pipe. To hell

with all of the wankers on their boards in broad daylight, fashion
plating through downtown, and to hell

likewise with arena rockers and Sunday afternoon
bikers and art museums
open from 8 til 5. I’d rather just

sit before the Dali in the dark, slowly
taking off all my clothes, showing
the master my tattoos one

at a time.

This Canadian Dreamscape

once upon a time I spent
8 months watching Hard
Core Logo over and over

again and once upon a time
I slept with a copy of Whale Music under
my arm under my
pillow and once upon a time

I believed in it all because
once upon a time the music bled
through me in waves just like
once upon a time the words spilled
onto the page in avalanches

Gord Downey came to me last night in a dream though and
speaking as Neil Young might have
told me a story about Glen
Gould, how he
spent all of his time
practicing andd how
even ugly Mordechi Richler would let
a cigar burn to the stub if he was
writing with fury, which is as much to say
once a day

and I woke up drenched
and bent my head into my palms
and wished for a song that would start

once upon a time

There are these moments
when concrete sense of morality
overloads
our inhibitions, and all
that is honest expresses itself. Do

you see the granite nature
of time? Do we know our fiends, our
friends as they

unwind time, all
your eggs in one
basket.

If you get down
to the soil, you can smell
creation, can feel the worms of
creation turn the marrow
as it whispers over geological time
of sacrafice, how thought
is a forgery of metals and how
our faults are but cracks
along the lines of
our soldering.

You wake some days and see the sun in all its majesty and know that she has risen for you.

A moment of thanks.
A gesture of friendship.
A glimpse into that which blinds, even if just for a second.
Divine -- dee-vine, squeeze it, you get wine.

HYMN FOR PROMETHEUS
A hand reaches in
to the open wound of the world
and extracts its own liver
to feed the vultures.

They are hungry
and he will grow
a new one tomorrow, spreading
his flesh like bread.

Art is everywhere. Open your wide and bright and beautiful eyes, sunshine.

The valley, she opens, and make
no mistake, the valley
is a woman, opening
her legs in invitation. Fall upon her
with love and worship and all
the sensations your million nerves can offer
and she will fulfill you,

try to take her, to ravage her, she
waits for that too, and will
crush you within
her vices: indulgence, lunacy,
wilderness.

Rain means nothing, darkens
while it whispers, rasps out
some cantankerous old tune
on Tom Waits' tin roof piano, a canon
literary as it is loud
and steeled into the earth.

Musical genres transform, for better or for worse is a matter of taste I suppose, and only very rarely fade to nothing, are swallowed by our collective unconsciousness or apathy, and are sent, like gods that have passed their age, to simmer in the dark corners of our belief as they wait for oblivion. For those of us who sacraficed so much spiritual mettle pouring sweat and cells into our sheets and sleepless nights as we extended our faith over the alters of belief in the Gods of Distortion and Feedback, the fact that they have left us is hard to suffer.

The Jesus and Mary Chain singing through walls of noise; Husker Du yelling their commandments from on high sonic waves; Skinny Puppy unleashing all the dogs of culture at once; all of the elemental powers left to sleep in the secret corners of our breasts, dreaming of revival and empowerment. Each day I give a little stronger prayer to keep you alive, gasoline into the engine of industrial honesty.

Afterall, everone needs a little more feedback.

The University of New Brunswick campus is a beautiful place of mystery, music and archaic secrets. This is how I adapt, make my place here understandable and, above all, secure my place within the storybooks of Ivory Tower history -- by riding my scooter in Chuck Berry fashion and weilding all the trust my rusty spine can muster that I will haunt these halls for all of eternity.

Old Skull legacy, sagacity and a love for all things that hide in the shadows.

Black is the new black.