feeding change

My head’s down working on a new project and an impending deadline, but I couldn’t look at my Friday post about ‘going to’ Pat Metheny anymore. We went, it was amazing in a way that I can’t even describe because I know I won’t do justice to it – although Chandrasutra once again does an amazing job of it.

All I can say is that for the last month having The Way Up in my headphones has been an incredible journey. Listening to a single track, 68 minutes long at first seems like a daunting task, but after a few listens when you hear the recognizable final melody begin, you long for more. A sadness takes over as you realise that trip is almost over. Not even the thought of replaying it again can comfort the longing you have to be back somewhere in the middle of the experience that is The Way Up.

I don’t have much experience with jazz, but in the last few months I have heard a great deal of Pat Metheny and I am very happy to be discovering him at a time when he has created something so important to both music and our culture at large.

TWU is more than an album, it’s an answer to the dumbing down of our culture. It’s a response to the hyper-pace, sound-bite jingles that pass for music these days. This view comes from Pat Metheny himself and it’s refreshing to know that, as always happens in times of cultural crisis, there are artists out there creating works that openly smash the standard, refuse the norm, and challenge the audience. I encourage you all, jazz fans or not, to answer the challenge and give TWU a listen.

On a side note: Due to forces that I cannot name or hope to understand, Chandrasutra was able to arrange for us to meet Pat Metheny after the show! It was both an amazing experience and an honour to be able to personally thank him for blowing my mind. There were only a handful of other people in the room, so we had a chance to actually talk to Pat about the music, our cultural crisis and mind-blowing in general. It was an unbelievably perfect way to end a fantastic night.

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Well, it’s finally here, after months of waiting the good news is finally official: the NHL Season is cancelled. The mental environment of thinking Canadians will continue to get a much needed boost with the absence of over-paid goons hogging the CBC airwaves from September to April.

Oh yeah, that other environment gets a boost today too. Go Team Earth!

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When I first started this blog I was concerned on the impact it’d have on my real writing, so I sought advice from the one writer who would definitely have a blog: William Gibson.

When I arrived at his site, I found that he’d stopped blogging because it was getting in the way of his fiction writing.

That concerned me, because if this guy can’t balance blogging and fiction writing how was I going to do it? But I persevered and kept up the blog and kept up the fiction writing. I’ve made it work mostly because when the paid writing gets busy or the writer’s block too jammed, the blog goes silent. But I always return to the blog for whatever reason. And now it seems that Gibson has returned to his blog. His reasons for returning, like his best novels, crystalize the conscious of the time and point to an ominious future:

“Why?

Because the United States currently has, as Jack Womack so succintly puts it, a president who makes Richard Nixon look like Abraham Lincoln.

And because, as the Spanish philospher Unamuno said, “At times, to be silent is to lie.”

From the archives, you’ll see that this is very old news, it happened back in October 04. But as with everything that’s pretty cool, I arrive fashionably late.

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