UPCOMING GIGS

  • June 10'20 Nice Bistro Whitby, ON
  • Apr.15'20 Princess M Hospital Atrium
  • Apr.11'20 HIRUT 2050 Danforth Toronto
  • Dec.14 '19 HIRUT 2050 Danforth Toronto
  • July 26 2019 Gull River, Minden ON
  • June 19, 2019 The Nice Bistro, Whitby
  • Sun.May5, 2019 Hugh's Room, Toronto
  • Sat.April 6, 2019 The Old Mill, Toronto
  • 15 marzo 2019, el gallo restaurant, san pancho, mexico
  • Feb. 26, 2019 Relish Bar/Grill, Toronto
  • Jan.23,2019 Nice Bistro, Whitby
  • Sept.29,'18 12:30-3:30pm; Glass Eagle Studio, Haliburton
  • Sept.19, 2018 Private Function, Toronto
  • July 27&28, Haliburton Arts&Crafts2-4pm
  • June 6, 2018 The Nice Bistro, Whitby, ON
  • Feb.23,2018 San Pancho Music Festival, Mexico
  • Jan.20,2018 The Old Mill Toronto, Home Smith Bar
  • Sept.30,2017 All That Jazz & More, at the Minden Legion
  • Aug. 5, 2017 Private Party, Carnarvon, ON
  • Aug. 4, 2017 Music by the Gull, Minden, ON
  • Aug. 2, 2017 The Nice Bistro, Whitby ON
  • May 17, 2017 The Nice Bistro, Whitby, ON
  • April 29, 2017 Minden Cultural Centre, Minden, ON
  • March 24,2017 The Old Mill Toronto, Home Smith Bar
  • Feb.26,2017 San Pancho Music Fest. Mexico
  • Nov.5, 2016 Radio Hall, CanoeFM, Haliburton, ON
  • Nov. 2, 2016 le Nice Bistro, Whitby, ON
  • Sept. 4, 2016 The Red Umbrella Inn, Minden, ON
  • July 26, 2016, Head Lake Park, Haliburton, ON
  • Jan. 29, 2016, The Home Smith Bar at the Old Mill, Toronto
  • Oct.23, 2015 Gate 403
  • Sept. 9 The Nice Bistro, Whitby, ON
  • August 22, Gate 403, Toronto
  • August 14, Music by the Gull, Minden, ON
  • July 29 Hugh's Room, Toronto
  • June 13, Gate 403,Toronto

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

TO FETCH A PAIL


Here’s a little piece I wrote a little while back, when I arrived up north, and never got around to posting.  Very short summer reading.

TO FETCH A PAIL

Time, sunshine, opportunity – and life, really.  It all seems wasted on me.  I’m here on a beautiful beach, facing the western sun as it splashes itself over the lake and the sand and the other people here on this mid-July day.  Four in the water, six on the small beige stretch – including me.  Other folks may be just finishing their workday here, or in the city.  I shouldn’t have a care in the world, but I’m alternately pissed off or weepy.  Even the toddler running back and forth shouting “I’m gonna getcha” as he chases his parents, doesn’t cheer me up; or the cheer is fleeting.

What is it with me?  Come on, wind.  Blow the smell offa me. Blow me back, back, and back some more to a place in my soul that can breathe.  The sun is hot when the wind dies; the lapping water calls me then.  Come in. come in. Forget your miserable life and feel something real.  I just stare into space.

And then, suddenly, I’m aware they’re all packing up to leave, and it’s just empty beach; quiet; soothing; waves rocking.  I sit, like the abandoned metal pail a few feet from me.  It waits; I wait.  For someone to fill me; to carry me; to carry for them; I wait to be lifted; I wait to swing with movement; to shape a castle; to inspire play.

I finally get up and go to my car. I know from life that waiting for anything or anyone is a waste of time, that i must be my own activator.  I get my bottle of water, my fifty-cent samosa from the city, and my bathing suit.  As usual, I’m motivated by food.  On the way back, I pick up the metal pail, and place it on the sand beside my chair.  I put the water bottle in.  Champagne and hors d’oeuvres lakeside.

the knots of life

Looking inward is dangerous sometimes
Some people are walking on the road behind me, clapping, hooting.  If they’re trying to get my attention, they’re failing – other than having themselves immortalized in words.   I won’t look at them.  They pass, as all things must.  And meanwhile, in front of me, the waves pass.  I watch, and wonder where the thoughts that I brought here are.  I imagine their floating out from my head when I first arrived, and then being carried off by the water far away – perhaps to the next town by this time.  It gives me satisfaction to think that people by some other shore have my problems now.

Around the world they go.  And myself, like an ancient ancestor, wishing them godspeed.

There was a huge dark cloud a few minutes ago, blocking the sun.  That too has passed, and now – hot samosa inside, hot sun out – I’m feelin’ hot, and pressured by my brain urging me to go on! Be spontaneous! (spontaneously contrary to my own lethargy, at least).  Do something today.  Change the channel.

Here comes a speeding boat – silver dart; black silhouette; fading buzz of the motor carried away on the wind and overtaken by the sound of a car stopping on the road.  Voices get closer to me, and then the two of them come into sight as they walk, mother and daughter, circling a small area, searching.  My hand drops over the side of my chair, protectively hovering over the metal pail.  “Did you lose something?” I ask, standing up.  I play with my bathing suit, as if I was going to put it on.  “Her shoes.  Pink crocs,” said the mother.  “Haven’t seen them,” I say, “and I’ve been here for over an hour.”  They leave.  “Maybe some of your friends took them for you,” mom says to her dejected child.  A metal pail wouldn’t make her happy, I think.

 And then, honestly, I can’t explain.  One minute I’m watching them walk away, and the next, my nose is skimming stones and I’m watching the waves’ shadows on the lake’s bottom.  And I’m pushing my way to the surface, and backstroking along the shoreline, watching the tall pines of “Tall Pines Road” against the white clouds and blue sky.  The universal solvent dissolves; resolves.

I lie face down on my towel, and let the sun dry me, panting a little and letting my shoulders sink into the sand.  Those problems must be well on into the southern lakes by now.

Go on, fly, little birds

Saturday, July 20, 2013

WHAT'S LUCK GOT TO DO WITH IT?

What would I say now? I want a brief escape from the road of life. Music is my focus - sometimes, but not always.  I am driven to write, have been driven all my life.  Life itself is too vast and demands its many needs be met.  Today I need to find a place in myself - to let myself wander through the unknown landscapes of my own heart and mind.  I need to be free of all my own conventions and habits, and go, or at least imagine myself going, to a world of possibility and potential, a place where the natural instincts of joy, trust and creativity are not sullied by the crap - whoops, did I say crap?  - I mean, by the distractions and limited visions and neuroses that a person so often meets.  Let me go to a more natural state of love.  Let me at least believe it's out there.  Let me meander through space and time until I happen upon it - accidentally, on purpose.
As Piaf once sang: "Non, je ne regrette rien."  All that's past is past, and now "je repars a zero." (sorry, francophones, don't have the accents on this computer).  I'm always starting at zero, it seems, but I don't see that as a negative, rather as an important element, and necessary for the prevention of bad habits or comfortable ruts.  We have an unhealthy attachment to our own selves, at times, and to our own points of view.  I rather like the feeling of being a nobody - an unknown traveller in strange new lands,-


and of meeting the world afresh. Of course, I would always carry my MasterCard or VISA with me, and psychologically speaking, I am likewise always armed.  I never leave home without the insurance of my own internal sense:  brains to see, hear, process; mouth to speak; guts to warn; and heart to love.  "And the greatest of these is....."
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I eat whole, natural, non-GMO, and organic-as-much-as-possible food. (except for french fries once in a while, of course.) And I try to keep to the same healthy regimen with things that enter my mind.  'Mens sana in corpore sano', n'est-ce pas?  da vero?  nach bhfuil?  Protecting the environment - one's own up-close and personal space, - is job one, physically and mentally.  And so, I will away.  I'll write, I promise.

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

THE MARVELS OF TECHNOLOGY

It's crazy, isn't it?   I try to get into this here blog (mine), from a computer down the road, and I can't - they tell me I haven't done that before; then today it's tutto bene - all no problem - after I have wasted a lot of my precious time trying to get through to the COMPANY via the net, then later at home on my land line.  It's all so difficult when you don't have a mobile phone, or texting whatever, or for that matter a computer that works at home.  No lecturing, please; I don't want any of that stuff.  I just want things to work, - a simple request, I would think.

OK, so what's new?  Well, some gigs coming up:

July 31, 2013; 7pm at the 
NICE BISTRO  (that's Neece - as in France)
117 Brock St. N.
Whitby, Ontario


Aug. 9, 2013; 6:30pm
Music by the Gull (River)
Minden, Ont.

Aug 31, 2013; 8pm
The Dance Party of the Summer
Minden Legion; Hwy 35 at Road 21

and last weekend a great surprise birthday party for Ron Johnston, with many visiting musical luminaries, as well as lots of friends and family members.  it was great.
I have a couple of photos:
Ron, myself, and Ron's uncle Frank Wright, an amazing musician who really has played at Carnegie Hall

Ron opening some gifts