Yesterday I went through all of the private messages I’d shared with Frank Gutch Jr, since I’d first encountered him. It was in 2013, just after I’d begun writing this weekly column, and right from that first message, it was as though we were separated at birth.
A conversation on Facebook can be a wonderful way to exchange ideas and share stories and experiences, or a field of quicksand littered with negative statements couched more in attention getting than contribution. While many of us wish to learn more about ourselves and the world around us, just as many are here on social media to argue, hate, spread rumours, be divisive, and generally either rain on your parade, or shit in your punch bowl. Like Wedding Crashers sent by a furious spurned lover to wreak havoc on a civil discussion by making it an argument. replacing discourse with shaming, bullying, schoolyard name calling, and mean-spirited opinions with no basis in fact.
Today, I share with you an actual FB thread that proves good conversation exists on social media sites, and that, frankly, you never know where they will go when the people having them take the thread in a different, but equally engaging direction. We start with the growing bigotry toward older people, and end up in the art department….
There were at least eleven of us sitting around the restaurant table. It was an impromptu dinner, decided upon on a whim. No vote, no forethought, just a bunch of like-minded people who found themselves together and decided they were hungry.
A friend of mine in the entertainment business once nailed the real truth of the matter, “It’s not selling OUT…it’s just SELLING”. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHJBO3eWQm0
So what if you’ve got street cred? In the end it won’t buy you a sandwich or get you on the bus when you’re destitute from starving for your art. Ah, yes…the old sawhorse debate about commerce versus art. We artistic types spend a 
disproportionate amount of time protecting our creations. They’re our babies and can’t be nursed by anyone but us. In music, that means slaving over the writing and producing process until every last drop of ‘inspiration’ can be sweat out of the muse.
We hereby interrupt our regularly scheduled blog about me to talk about…me.
In my new day gig working in a train yard and shipping cars from here to — over there somewhere — I occasionally encounter cars that aren’t off a current assembly line but private cars being shipped by citizens for fun, profit and the rare felony dodge.
I’ve never been a huge art buff. I enjoy many types of art, but there are also a lot of types that I don’t really understand. That being said, I’ve never been one to turn down a chance to experience interesting art from any and all time periods. I’ve been to some of the greatest galleries and museums in the world, from the Museum of Modern Art in New York, to the Louvre in Paris and the Prado in Madrid. I live on Queen West and have perused many of the galleries that line my street, and have learned something new with every visit. So when my friend Jordan told me about an event called the Art Battle, I was intrigued.
Bullseye Records of Canada
