Where to begin. It’s 10:40pm on a Tuesday night. I’ve just lit 10 candles, some sage incense and the music is drifting throughout the house. Sounds like 1960 something…. all I need is the Mateus bottle and a spliff…. The days are running into each other, colliding like the two drunken racoons cavorting in my backyard. (they eat the fermented grapes that have fallen off the vine) and I start to lose all track of time just trying to keep track.
It has indeed been a busy summer for everyone. 2016 has been a peculiar, curious and rather dramatic year. A year of extreme change, upheavals, death, excessive busyness, new connections, sheer stupidity, life transformations and adjustments — nothing has been minor. It’s all been “in our faces”, screaming and shouting at us, begging us to take notice, pleading with us to address whatever is coming at us. I think many will be glad to see the back end of 2016 and look forward with hope to 2017. No, this is not a ‘year-end’ column, just a bit of reflection on the summer that seemingly whizzed by and all that happened in just that short timeframe.
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….
I have been in a quandary about what I am going to write about for today’s column. The past week, and especially the weekend, have disappeared in a flash, everything just jumbled together, one thing overlapping the other. Now here it is Tuesday night and I’ve started this piece four times!
Personally it’s been, indubitably, a year of massive, incredible change….a complete turnaround….a 360….that’s two 180’s, and I’m still spinning. It’s been jam packed full of opportunities, challenges, reconnections, new connections, bags of music, loads of dancing, early mornings, late nights, no sleep, G&T’s, club hopping, previews and reviews, outdoor patios, fast food, fine dining, ear-splitting bands, (did I mention dancing), photo shoots, video shoots and writing. Okay, deep breath, plunging in, here we go….the year in review. Really!! ….and WELCOME BACK!
Sunday, October 4 there was a gathering of 27 people in my backyard, on my back deck and in my kitchen (much to Peter Kashur’s chagrin). A belated birthday BBQ for Bob Segarini with some of his DBAWIS writers, and a sort of “welcome home/back” to friend, Greg Simpson, who really doesn’t get “back east” too often after returning to B.C. almost five years ago to live near his family. This gave him the opportunity to get together with people he doesn’t often get to spend time with.
The weeks are just flying by. As a matter of fact, I think I missed a few just by blinking. This summer was one of the best ever in terms of music, mayhem and marvelous people. I have met countless new faces, made some brilliant new friends and reconnected with numerous folks, long thought fallen through the many cracks of life. It’s been a unending discovery, a wide-eyed, deer-in-the-headlights discovery, of going places and doing things that never, not even in my wildest neurons, would I have even remotely considered. It’s been a mind-bending, life altering, rollercoaster ride and I don’t want to ever get off. It’s called living!
Saturday…..I’m running around the house, back and forth, up and down the stairs, front yard and back yard, dodging in and out of the various rooms. I start one job that segues into another into another into another… It’s one of those days.
As much as it’s a sappy platitude from the late music legend Andrew Gold, there’s no other way of saying thanks to those who have stuck by me year after year. I have over 2800 ‘friends’ on my Facebook profile. This isn’t a boast. It’s a matter of fact and it’s not to point out the quantity. I’m the rare exception in social media who actually knows most of the people I’ve friended.
One of the greatest pieces of advice I ever got was from a nefarious character I used to buy drugs from. You would never guess that was what he did for a living. He was always impeccably dressed and well turned out, drove a beautifully kept, unpretentious Cadillac sedan, and, though he sold a great deal of product to a wide variety of people, did not partake in said product at all.
As I got to know him over the years, I was surprised to find out that he did not have to sell drugs to make a living…in fact, he didn’t have to earn a living at all. He was wealthy. I never pried, and did not know exactly how he had become so well off, but I believe, due mostly to his demeanor, overall brightness, and well-informed outlook on life, that his financial situation was either inherited or earned through shrewd investments. It was old money.
Bullseye Records of Canada
