Friday, June 29, 2007
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Dancing on Burrard
Worried about the meeting I arrived early, dressed to the ‘nines.’
Of all places, right outside the building where I was to have the 9th floor meeting was an eight man blues band all hooked up to their electronics and Kenny Wayne on the piano singing his ass off. The jive was spot on and I danced in the sun and in front of at least 200 onlookers on a bright day in that business district of Burrard St amidst all those splendid, sparkling glass buildings. And I danced and cadenced like a 17 year old and then I realized I was being watched.
All that observation increased me somehow as I was not then self-conscious, but I was aware of being watched there in my jacket and tie, old briefcase to the side, snapping my fingers and shifting my hips etc (dancing, gotcha?).
After the band finished and I proceeded to my meeting in the building, on the elevator the first woman (a lovely Asian) told me “I wanted to dance with you.” On my way out, on the sunny street a couple confessed they would have enjoyed to dance with me. I was surprised and said, “Sometimes, as you may recall, we have to dance.” We laughed remembering our youth.
It was a pleasure to dance for them all. And Kenny Wayne and his band knew and appreciated it that glorious few moments on Burrard.
Of all places, right outside the building where I was to have the 9th floor meeting was an eight man blues band all hooked up to their electronics and Kenny Wayne on the piano singing his ass off. The jive was spot on and I danced in the sun and in front of at least 200 onlookers on a bright day in that business district of Burrard St amidst all those splendid, sparkling glass buildings. And I danced and cadenced like a 17 year old and then I realized I was being watched.
All that observation increased me somehow as I was not then self-conscious, but I was aware of being watched there in my jacket and tie, old briefcase to the side, snapping my fingers and shifting my hips etc (dancing, gotcha?).
After the band finished and I proceeded to my meeting in the building, on the elevator the first woman (a lovely Asian) told me “I wanted to dance with you.” On my way out, on the sunny street a couple confessed they would have enjoyed to dance with me. I was surprised and said, “Sometimes, as you may recall, we have to dance.” We laughed remembering our youth.
It was a pleasure to dance for them all. And Kenny Wayne and his band knew and appreciated it that glorious few moments on Burrard.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Hippie Who?
Not too long ago there was a piece published about 'hippies' and I am pleased to have forgotten the name of the common media which permitted the article and the writer fella who talked about how 'hippies' were so important. The word itself - hippie (as in being one who is hip) - was thoroughly repugnant to social revolutionaries of that day.
Had the phony knower known or been a part or experienced anything from that era of intellectual challenge, even been a minor member to assault the establishment of the day, the word 'hippie' would have smelt clearly to him as a betrayal. The so-called 'hippie movement' was reposited in a burial parade in 1967 in San Francisco at Haight-Ashbury. Trust the common media and some idiot, google-defect scribbler to fumble history.
"In 1963, Beatniks were fleeing North Beach to take advantage of the cheap rents and available storefronts of the Haight. But a sea change took place between the scruffy existential Beats and the earliest denizens of the Haight: LSD. Haight-Ashbury was the site of a remarkable syncretism, an admixture of influences that coalesced over time into the psychedelic eddy that Haight Street became. Like the collection of thrift-store finery and period costumes the original hippies fancied, their philosophy was fashioned from Eastern mysticism, comic books, science fiction, and the Beat writers who acted as a filtering agent through which the younger poets picked and chose their reading. Similarly, acid-rock emerged out of a grab-bag of styles: Be-bop Jazz improvisation, folk and bluegrass modalities, dabbed on a heavy impasto of garage-rock primitivism. For the hippies, LSD was their communion, and rock music their liturgy.
"At first the scene was remarkably self-supporting, with small venues catering to a local group of cognoscenti. In 1965, there were an estimated 800 hippies in residence. By 1966, new arrivals had flooded the Haight, with an estimated 15,000 hippies in residence. A more disturbing statistic, but at this point hardly a blip on the radar were the 1,200 runaway teens who flocked to the Haight as if guided by some special teen-alienation magnet. Shops, boutiques, restaurants, and clubs sprang up to cater to the new arrivals, and an activist collective, the Diggers, provided for the needs of the more indigent among them with a soup kitchen, crash pads, and later, a free store.
"The year 1967 started off optimistically enough with the first 'Be-In,' a massive free concert and showcase of the local musicians. A hippie parade in the Haight-Ashbury district, 1967. It was by all accounts a magical event. The next logical phase, or so it seemed to the movers-and-shakers of the community, was to invite the youth of America to the Haight for the summer.
"They envisioned a kind of hippie training: the youth would come, get turned on, and return from whence they came with the blueprint for a new culture. It didn't quite turn out that way. Young people did arrive for the summer, but they were not the beautiful people the Haight habitués anticipated. 'They had bad teeth and acne scars and it was easy to see why they hadn't been voted homecoming king or queen back in Oshkosh or Biloxi or wherever they'd come from,' wrote Jay Stevens. 'These kids were rejects; they'd come here because they were losers, and while they had a certain Christian appropriateness, it was not what the Council for the Summer of Love had expected.'
"By summer's end, the dream of a self-sufficient urban conclave of tripping Luddites had dissolved in a miasma of hard drugs, runaways, and incipient neglect. The fragile social infrastructure the counterculture had built was overcome by the onslaught. Tour buses and sight-seers flooded the district, as did reporters. Their dispatches only added to the throng of destitute, addled kids. The indiscriminate use of every variety of drug was legion, as were drug busts, hence informing and informers.
"The language was Love," writes Hunter S. Thompson, "but the style was paranoia." That October, the Diggers held a mock burial of the "Hippie, son of Media" in Golden Gate Park. It was a pointed bit of street theater, but it was after the fact. The wave had surged and broken, leaving human jetsam in its wake. By then, the Haight-Ashbury pioneers had already fled to higher ground."
Joachim Foikis wouldn't even pause to piss on that local writer's grave... too busy dancing.
Had the phony knower known or been a part or experienced anything from that era of intellectual challenge, even been a minor member to assault the establishment of the day, the word 'hippie' would have smelt clearly to him as a betrayal. The so-called 'hippie movement' was reposited in a burial parade in 1967 in San Francisco at Haight-Ashbury. Trust the common media and some idiot, google-defect scribbler to fumble history.
"In 1963, Beatniks were fleeing North Beach to take advantage of the cheap rents and available storefronts of the Haight. But a sea change took place between the scruffy existential Beats and the earliest denizens of the Haight: LSD. Haight-Ashbury was the site of a remarkable syncretism, an admixture of influences that coalesced over time into the psychedelic eddy that Haight Street became. Like the collection of thrift-store finery and period costumes the original hippies fancied, their philosophy was fashioned from Eastern mysticism, comic books, science fiction, and the Beat writers who acted as a filtering agent through which the younger poets picked and chose their reading. Similarly, acid-rock emerged out of a grab-bag of styles: Be-bop Jazz improvisation, folk and bluegrass modalities, dabbed on a heavy impasto of garage-rock primitivism. For the hippies, LSD was their communion, and rock music their liturgy.
"At first the scene was remarkably self-supporting, with small venues catering to a local group of cognoscenti. In 1965, there were an estimated 800 hippies in residence. By 1966, new arrivals had flooded the Haight, with an estimated 15,000 hippies in residence. A more disturbing statistic, but at this point hardly a blip on the radar were the 1,200 runaway teens who flocked to the Haight as if guided by some special teen-alienation magnet. Shops, boutiques, restaurants, and clubs sprang up to cater to the new arrivals, and an activist collective, the Diggers, provided for the needs of the more indigent among them with a soup kitchen, crash pads, and later, a free store.
"The year 1967 started off optimistically enough with the first 'Be-In,' a massive free concert and showcase of the local musicians. A hippie parade in the Haight-Ashbury district, 1967. It was by all accounts a magical event. The next logical phase, or so it seemed to the movers-and-shakers of the community, was to invite the youth of America to the Haight for the summer.
"They envisioned a kind of hippie training: the youth would come, get turned on, and return from whence they came with the blueprint for a new culture. It didn't quite turn out that way. Young people did arrive for the summer, but they were not the beautiful people the Haight habitués anticipated. 'They had bad teeth and acne scars and it was easy to see why they hadn't been voted homecoming king or queen back in Oshkosh or Biloxi or wherever they'd come from,' wrote Jay Stevens. 'These kids were rejects; they'd come here because they were losers, and while they had a certain Christian appropriateness, it was not what the Council for the Summer of Love had expected.'
"By summer's end, the dream of a self-sufficient urban conclave of tripping Luddites had dissolved in a miasma of hard drugs, runaways, and incipient neglect. The fragile social infrastructure the counterculture had built was overcome by the onslaught. Tour buses and sight-seers flooded the district, as did reporters. Their dispatches only added to the throng of destitute, addled kids. The indiscriminate use of every variety of drug was legion, as were drug busts, hence informing and informers.
"The language was Love," writes Hunter S. Thompson, "but the style was paranoia." That October, the Diggers held a mock burial of the "Hippie, son of Media" in Golden Gate Park. It was a pointed bit of street theater, but it was after the fact. The wave had surged and broken, leaving human jetsam in its wake. By then, the Haight-Ashbury pioneers had already fled to higher ground."
Joachim Foikis wouldn't even pause to piss on that local writer's grave... too busy dancing.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Lost Child of the Sun
He strode to the Pacific in only his ragged blue shorts ruffling in the wind. His shoulders could carry burdens and the recalled souls of many children, his musculature clear but his swagger mysteriously timid. It was a gait his grandmother would know, love and dearly want to protect. This private march in the tricky sand and the presence of that skin called all the gods out. As witnesses and protectors.
He hesitated in the bright formless, blue sky before his toe touched the ocean. He proceeded into that grey vastness of stories, poked about to his knee length and then paused to look back at a friend as though asking for reassurance. The wind was making his hair. His hands were delicately upraised as he gingerly stepped deeper into Father Ocean.
He knew the coldness of that body now; then holding his nose he baptized himself. The sun celebrated when he reappeared. Then he dove and swam. And all his fears were left... in that fleeting breeze.
He cleared the water, wiped his face; returned to the baked sand of the beach amidst the dormant crowd, thumbed about his breeches for a good wind there and with a newly invigorated stride accepted momentarily his affirmation as child of the sun and given of good earth. Though distant and vague to him, his possibilities were pronounced by his shoulders carving a new form of the mountains behind.
His name is Man. He is my friend.
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Taliban Threatens Canada
New words have entered the traditional Cdn’s vocabulary of late and all seem to add up to a level of bewilderment not seen by this writer for a thousand years. These words include Hamas, Taliban, Al Kite-ah! Sunni, Shite (sp?), Fatah, insurgents; and then phrases and acronyms like suicide bomber, IED’s (improvised explosive device – true sneekiness) and collateral damage (costing zillions more lives than 9/11) while still looking for 6.5 foot Osama-been-there-before; and the stories of heroes at war are now scripted very differently or buried in terms like Friendly Fire. The word Christ obviously got lost in this new vocabulary among all these insurgents and God-Lovers. Allah be praised and blah blah boom boom. How endlessly and mortally exasperating and why for the love of Allah are not moderate Muslims striving every day to end this brtual, life-sucking nonsense? It’s really up to them to speak that language.
Only through communication and the courage of commitment to the holiness of life will this profoundly grievous warring in the Middle East of Nowhere ever end.
But hey: they’re buying Ipods and tuning out over there too. So much for communication and hope. Humanity rots on the vine of our indifference to each other as we pass by on the sidewalks sneering because we have the latest tune-out device plugged into our heads.
Gooda-lucka.
And wait till the chaos comes here to Vancouver – which previewed its emergency awareness during the drinking water “crisis” of last year. Instant panic. If the Taliban suicidalists make their threat true to visit Canada watch for new levels of frenzy among us, the sophisticated and sneering and woefully unprepared - for the lack of any real moral commitment to anything.
Only through communication and the courage of commitment to the holiness of life will this profoundly grievous warring in the Middle East of Nowhere ever end.
But hey: they’re buying Ipods and tuning out over there too. So much for communication and hope. Humanity rots on the vine of our indifference to each other as we pass by on the sidewalks sneering because we have the latest tune-out device plugged into our heads.
Gooda-lucka.
And wait till the chaos comes here to Vancouver – which previewed its emergency awareness during the drinking water “crisis” of last year. Instant panic. If the Taliban suicidalists make their threat true to visit Canada watch for new levels of frenzy among us, the sophisticated and sneering and woefully unprepared - for the lack of any real moral commitment to anything.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
The Death of Joachim Foikis
He died dancing.
I met him when he was dancing and I took his hand as we skipped about the fountain at what is now the art gallery on Georgia Street – which was then a courthouse where the RCMP had a detachment at the Howe Street side, so Joachim’s dancing was also a challenge. The Vancouver Town Fool as he allowed and prided himself to be called was blessed with a voice, demeanor and courage which combined with his unintimidating physicality and gentle manner spooked the sad little bureaucracy that Vancouver was morphing into under the ‘leadership’ of frightened little men like Mayor Tom Campbell. While the desperately wasteful Vietnam war and other intellectual assaults were commonplace in a time when men needed to hear the voices of champions of good thought, Joachim Foikis stood tall, and while dancing high on a precipice above a band at Victoria harbour fell to his divinely scripted demise. Way to go, Joachim.
I met him when he was dancing and I took his hand as we skipped about the fountain at what is now the art gallery on Georgia Street – which was then a courthouse where the RCMP had a detachment at the Howe Street side, so Joachim’s dancing was also a challenge. The Vancouver Town Fool as he allowed and prided himself to be called was blessed with a voice, demeanor and courage which combined with his unintimidating physicality and gentle manner spooked the sad little bureaucracy that Vancouver was morphing into under the ‘leadership’ of frightened little men like Mayor Tom Campbell. While the desperately wasteful Vietnam war and other intellectual assaults were commonplace in a time when men needed to hear the voices of champions of good thought, Joachim Foikis stood tall, and while dancing high on a precipice above a band at Victoria harbour fell to his divinely scripted demise. Way to go, Joachim.
Brad Firmino's Genius
Now here's a guy I am lucky to know and who was generous with his artwork when I was selling menus to pay the rent. He's living in Montreal now and obviously (see below) that city is inspiring him - which is no surprise considering the spirited Gallics. Watch this boy's work carefully. If the Canadian media ever awaken to the burst of new and profoundly interesting talent in this country, the name Brad Firmino will take its rightful place among our stars.
Friday, June 01, 2007
Monuments Worth Erecting
I heard recently that those two entwined rings at English Bay (my version of a cheap prize in the bottom of a box of CrackerJacks) are finally coming down and are to be installed at the Port of San Diego. Bon Voyage! It took months to install these cheesy trinkets. Good luck to the Americans. Divorce never looked so good.
And might I suggest we Vancouverites awaken to the fact that that we are not Eskimos and that the much slavered over Innukshuk doesn't really have a place there at the bay either.
With Captain Vancouver's 215th anniversary of his discoveries coming up this June why not commission the striking of a proper statue there at that Two Ringed Circus site of the visionary man who was reviled in his home country until his early death? And where the slab of stones is now, why not erect a statue of Chief Khatsalano who was unceremoniously evicted from his home at Stanley Park, peering stoically across the inlet at his namesake community? Real figures of history sharing the same beach and different visions where they probably met each other on occasion and shared a few laughs.
Besides, wouldn't such an artistic initiative help in the process of distracting tourists as we go about sweeping away our homeless and hoisting hordes of colourful banners tilting in the wind at the downtown eastside?
And might I suggest we Vancouverites awaken to the fact that that we are not Eskimos and that the much slavered over Innukshuk doesn't really have a place there at the bay either.
With Captain Vancouver's 215th anniversary of his discoveries coming up this June why not commission the striking of a proper statue there at that Two Ringed Circus site of the visionary man who was reviled in his home country until his early death? And where the slab of stones is now, why not erect a statue of Chief Khatsalano who was unceremoniously evicted from his home at Stanley Park, peering stoically across the inlet at his namesake community? Real figures of history sharing the same beach and different visions where they probably met each other on occasion and shared a few laughs.
Besides, wouldn't such an artistic initiative help in the process of distracting tourists as we go about sweeping away our homeless and hoisting hordes of colourful banners tilting in the wind at the downtown eastside?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)