tell me about yourself
I started down this path a long time ago. I was playing a lego guitar while wearing elton john glasses at the dawn of the 1980's. as soon as I could physically manage it (probably before), I wanted to know how to put the amazing records on the turntable and play tapes in the tape machine. my parents and I listened to the CBC, classical and jazz, and went to the symphony. in school I learned the viola and later on taught myself to play the guitar (I now own six).
the lush synth-driven music of the 80's dazzled me - the deceptively simple, memorable themes, the syncopation, the perfection of the sixteenth-notes on electronic percussion. the layers and layers taking place in this clean, optimistic future-place somewhere Out There.
from listening to and playing Holst, Vivaldi and Bach, and a further list as long as my arm I am suppressing in the interests of readability, I progressed to the music made available to me in the 90's by Canadian music TV (R.I.P.). Robert Miles' "Dreamland" rocked me completely and made me fall in love with electronic music forever. the first time I heard David Bowie's "Dead Man Walking" while at the Crag-X climbing gym I had to know more about this amazing artist. I got a copy of "Earthling", the first CD I ever bought for myself, which garnered me my first noise complaint (while housesitting! how embarassing!). not finding the version on it of "I'm Afraid of Americans" I had expected from the video led me to the remix CD and to Nine Inch Nails. some chance encounter at a friend-of-a-friend's house produced "cowgirl" by underworld and I bought several of their albums over the years. it was an amazing, expanding trip.
around the same time I became aware of something disturbing. the lofty ideals we had been taught, honesty, beauty, truth, humanity, reason were increasingly absent from our daily lives. hanging out smoking cigarettes with other kids in high school, I began with others to reflect ruefully on how disempowered and hopeless we felt in a world ruled from afar by an incomprehensible elite and affected by events we could not hope to understand. I started seeing how bromide commands like "don't judge people from outward appearances" and "try to be fair to people and accept their faults, because we're all human" became toothless bullshit in the face of the bottom-line world of working for a living, in other words, barely surviving.
many of us already were getting substance abuse problems or the beginnings of unacknowledged mental disorders, particularly depression, self-image problems and social anxiety, before the end of highschool. and though I know now that there were people trying to help, they didn't and arguably couldn't reach all of us.
the simultaneous presence of these two conflicting worlds, the progressive, hopeful, idealistic one; and the grinding, sycophantic, meathook day-to-day war to make ends meet began to hurt me deeply and I became increasingly shy and solitary. my few friends and I would drink vodka or wine or beer and have passionate shouting matches about the disparity we saw between what was and what ought to be.
at the same time our collective consciousness was being painfully activated, the old world we had come from set about dying. it seemed like everyone was in it to hang on tooth and nail to what little they could save of their dignity and integrity.
about this time I had finished my first album, "strangeness in beauty", and began to think about a record deal. as I attended university, I began sending out, I want to say now, dozens and dozens of demo packages to record labels I liked, then over time, just any record label I thought might give a tenth of a crap about my sound. the whole time, 2000-2005 roughly, I sent out maybe 100 assorted demos, and got one rejection letter from Nettwerk, and one intrigued "not the right time for us" from an outfit back east called Noise Factory.
this whole time I was discovering the world of poetry, this incredible garden of language that could be defined by its rules or entirely stripped of them. I pored over T. S. Eliot and much (ridiculously much!) later Allen Ginsberg.
Ginsberg's words in particular hit me with a shock of acceptance. this was the world I lived in!! the honest, unflinching, glorious, horrifying truth was laid bare - the terrible problem - the distant, blinding lights of some dizzying future success and a chance for heaven on earth.
slowly I began to write poetry I didn't think was total shit. in my increasing isolation and by now, total disillusionment, I had developed a very self-effacing, bitter, nihilistic and self-destructive streak I still have to bite back on today.
I was so drained emotionally by the deafening silence greeting my efforts at getting a record deal that I did almost nothing after 2005 to try and get published.
my "one" "tangible" success in this period came from meeting model and fellow artist Jillian Ann through the internet, and with her, creating an electronic suite we called "Eden". today it can be found on iTunes, and has been downloaded by people as far afield as Australia.
I am now closer than ever to some kind of balance, after a cascade of personal catastrophes that saw me lose several friends to distance and drama, many relatives to cancer and old age, and a marriage to mutual misalignment. now I sit in the middle of the bomb crater with my little sun umbrella and watch new things grow, as I know they always will and always have.
I make my albums and my little books and give them to people I think are ready for them, or even people I want to provoke. this pleases me in its simplicity and the level of control I have over the finished product.
I live balanced on the edge of something amazing. and even if it never comes to fruition, thanks to my long and colourful journey I know I can count on certain people to love me without setting conditions, to respect me, and to understand that I will always need time alone, in the lab or on the page, or simply wandering the beach at night, because I was changed by my journey. For the time being I am content to work a good job, to enjoy the companionship of my friends and family, and always to be plotting and working on some seed or other which may someday sprout a bridge between all these souls and mine.
love
beauty - passion - reason - humanity
* nature *