Red Deaths Matter (Part 2)

 

Goddess Damn and Curse Anyone Responsible Who Might Remain!!!

Even my beloved, distant home-The Gulf Islands-are not exempt from the horrors of Canada's Residential School System!

I knew the Penelakut. I knew the Coast Salish, Cowichan, Saanich... The Spirits of their ancestors danced with me as a child, as I conjured my own visions of Faeries, Elves, and Imaginary Friends. Later, as a teenage Witch In Training, I was certain that something "Of The Land"; energies tethered to the rocks, trees and tides, could only have been called-by my uneducated mind at that time-"Supernatural". They watched over me, protected me, and even to a degree, subtly influenced my Spiritual development. The Cove to which I often ventured to study, meditate, and swim was undeniably sacred, protected at either end by small (small, being 8-9 ft high) totems that must have been carved hundreds of years before. The wood was bleached almost white, like the driftwood scattered at their feet. Time and the elements had caused severe decay, yet that only seemed to add to their beauty. The first creature was only a little hard to make out. There were no bears on the Island, so I assumed it was an Otter, perhaps? They held a Salmon in their paws. Their companion had been cracked and eroded beyond recognition. Yet, like it's friend, it resonated with a great power, a magick that transcended culture or race. It was universal; primordial. It was Endless, and All of Us. To their credit, the Hippies that gave Saltspring much of it's reputation as a 'Communal Artist's Retreat' knew how important these gentle sentinels were. They revered them as sacrosanct, and there wasn't as much as a smudge of paint or a romantic declaration of unity carved inside a heart ANYWHERE on or near these great wooden Beasties!

I learned as recently as twenty years ago that Otter now resides in a Museum somewhere, having been displaced when the land was purchased by an Asian Fish Hatchery, or some such corporate monstrosity...

Corporate Monstrosities. Institutional Monstrosities...I didn't even KNOW there had been a residential school hidden somewhere within our little archipelago. We boasted one of the first Buddhist Monasteries in North America. We were proud that Saltspring was the West Coast equivalent of Halifax's Africville, too! Some of the refugees who traversed the Underground Railway turned Left instead of Right, and found Saltspring and it's smaller Sister Islands brimming with fish and game, fertile and boundless with agricultural promise, but most of all, secluded, hidden. Safe.

I guess safety all depends on One's belief system. Once the Catholic Church arrived in the 1890's, the Island ceased to be a Paradise for it's original inhabitants. I reiterate-I had NO idea where the school was, or upon which island. I would have thought our little Gulf Islands were small enough to remain unnoticed by the Catholic Juggernaut, yet I suppose a few Jesuit Missionaries found their way eventually, and the Genocide continued. Even on Fantasy Island. I guess nowhere is ever really safe...not even Lotus Land.

I have never felt more betrayed by Nostalgia's ruse.

May those 160 Souls find peace. May those 160 Lives be avenged.

May all manner of Hell rain down upon the Corporate Monstrosity that is the Catholic Church.

Gods and Goddesses Damn Them All...

July 13/2021

)O(

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/penelakut-kuper-residential-school-1.6100201?fbclid=IwAR1Za_FkhST7fE7_j8_-_6hHls8TAqst7Lg67vcjVczynlONlymwEqrvnNU

Red Deaths Matter...

  I have spent this last week vacillating between nausea, heartbreak,outrage and mute apoplexy, and still can't really articulate how I feel regarding the issue upon which I am about to expound... I've cried, I've raged. I've prayed...But most of all, I've had to explain to people-far too many people, people who claim to be enlightened and "woke"-what's caused me such emotional upheaval in the first place!!
This Spring, much of the "Knowne Worlde" has been commemorating the centennial of the Tampa/Greenwood Massacre. It's about bloody time. It is at once horrifying and baffling that something so egregious could have occurred so close to home, and so recent to our lifetime, yet remain virtually-if not deliberately-unknown. It's acknowledgement might have continued to remain denied if not for it's shocking depiction last year in "The Watchmen" an action/adventure/fantasy series on HBO.
But yet...

This VERY weekend, a discovery was unearthed in our own backyard that I was sure would plunge our Nation into riotous grief: demonstrations, chanting, singing, drumming, signs and banners reading RED LIVES MATTER! RED DEATHS MATTER!! SUFFER THE CHILDREN!! NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE!! and equally catchy slogans bouncing rhythmically over the heads of the thousands of traumatised Canadians parading through the streets of every major city of our enlightened, liberal, egalitarian nation...
Instead, there have been a few polite and understated vigils involving candles and children's shoes collect in symbolic piles on the steps of government buildings, where flags have been lowered to half mast. I've had to waste valuable mourning time telling anyone who will listen that the bodies of-at last count-215 children were found in a mass grave on the property of what was known as, until the mid 70's, Kamloops Residential School.
I will repeat.
The bodies of 215 children were discovered in a mass grave in Kamloops British Columbia.
THE BODIES OF TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTEEN CHILDREN WERE DISCOVERED IN A MASS GRAVE IN KAMLOOPS, BRITISH COLUMBIA!!!
Yes. It's true. It really happened. This nightmarish obscenity of Holocaustian proportion occurred just a few hours drive outside of Vancouver, in our lifetime. This isn't some textbook historical event, rendered clinical and abstract by distance and time;Cambodian Killing Fields or Spanish Inquisition. This is here and now. It's real. It's Us.
Where is the outrage? Why aren't we tearing at our hair and rending our garments?! I would like to think the deafening silence is the result of shock, disbelief, and denial. I can't even condemn people for not caring. Ultimately, they just don't know anything about it...
To be continued...unfortunately!

Jeffery Lee Pierce

There are woefully, so many-phenomenally talented artists who lived-and died-in obscurity, but managed to make enough of an impact on just the right-number and type of-people to influence an entire movement.
Jeffery Lee Pierce was just such an artist. He pretty much invented Alt-Country.

Jeffery Lee Pierce was a Meso/American musician from Southern California, who came up during the formative L.A. Punk years in the mid to late 70’s. He began as a music journalist and president of the west coast chapter of the BLONDIE fan-club. He ultimately met Debby Harry, who recognised his potential and, with her husband Chris Stein, championed his burgeoning musical career.
With his band The Gun Club (that basically consisted of Jeffery, and anyone who could stand to be in the same room with him.) he created a unique style of American music that amalgamated Punk, Delta-Blues, Rockabilly, Country and what later became known as Goth. His songs were catchy, cinematic and often anthemic, always dark, and strangely beautiful. His lyrics were at once starkly intimate, and phantasmagorical, incorporating mystical imagery from the American Natives, Santeria and Voudo, and Mexican Folk-tales and superstitions. The confessional tone of his writing was made all the more heartrending when sung in a voice that his good friend Nick Cave once observed: “could tear your heart out”. Spanning a range from a smokey baritone to a high, bleating falsetto, he seemed to deliberately sing off pitch in order to elicit a viscerally emotional response in the listener. He used vibrato to great effect, as well, and even managed a few classic “olde timey” yodels, yet the result was never kitsch. He expressed himself like a wounded animal-a primal howl in a wilderness of alienation, heartbreak and substance abuse.
It was only after his untimely death in 1996 that he began to earn the reputation as a formidable musician and songwriter. A series of tribute albums was released that included tracks from artists such as the a fore mentioned Cave and Harry, as well as Iggy Pop, and Henry Rollins, to name only a few. His songs have been reverently covered by Mark Lannegan, The Sadies, and Jack White. Johnny Cash was rumoured to have been considering recording a cover of one of Jeffery’s songs before his own death preempted the possibility.
“Go Tell The Mountain” part autobiography, part back catalogue of lyrics, was released soon after his death, and proved he was a fine author of prose as well. It contains a few snippets of what may have been autobiographical fiction that was beautifully crafted, and at times, hard-hitting and emotionally difficult to navigate. One piece in particular stands out, a surprisingly intimate erotic character study of two doomed lovers, that is both vulnerable and voluptuous. It’s truly heartbreaking to think of the creative potential that was lost far too soon.
Finally, there are at least two documentaries waiting to be green lit, and a completed film sits shelved, awaiting the music licensing regulations to clear. There's something resembling a doc roughly cobbled together on YouTube, but it's unfairly unflattering.
Perhaps Jeffery Lee Pierce will finally be able to take his rightful place as one of America’s great and influential songwriters. Not many artists can lay claim to having invented an entire genre.

                                                 **********************        

Personally, I discovered The Gun Club in my teens, and was instantly transformed. He became-and remains-a huge influence on my writing and even my singing style. Through the miracle of social media, I have been privileged to befriend both his Mother and Sister-the executrix of his estate-and have recently been given their gracious blessing to record my own album of JLP songs. Hopefully, my own humble labour of love can help bring the art of this virtually unknown genius to a new and varied audience…

I'm Not A FANATIC For This Film!

I'm still baffled the morning after watching the steaming pile of inexplicable mess that is Netflix's "FANATIC".
I was initially intrigued that it starred John Travolta as what appeared to be someone either Autistic or developmentally impaired, and assumed he would lend his considerable acting chops to portray such a character with depth, nuance and sensitivity. Well, my hopes began to fizzle once I saw that the film was the latest "vanity project" (co-written, produced, directed, catered by, etc) of Fred Durst, former Frontman for last century's Pizza-Rock pioneers "Limp Bizkit". Now I've never seen any of Durst's previous forays into cinema, but if this is any indication, then it appears that his filmography is just as sophomoric, inane and pointless as was his shitty band. The outrageously insensitive and offensive charicature of-what should have been the pathetic, child-like- 'Moose' aside, this film is just plain bad. I think it was supposed to be a Noir-ish, cautionary, morality tale, with what I think was supposed to be a surprise ending, but "FANATIC" suffers from such an identity crisis that it was impossible to find any kind of theme or meaning amid this cringe-inducing, nihilistic goo. Emotionally convoluted, poorly researched (with not even the most basic knowledge of police and forensic procedure) and riddled with plot holes you could drive a Heino through, not only is it a waste of time, but I needed to bathe once the ordeal mercifully concluded. Unless you're drinking with friends and want a new film to add to the experience of communal hilarity you get with cult stinkers like THE ROOM or PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, then run screaming from this Limp Bizkit of a movie.

RIP La Hacienda

Another piece o' my heart gets ripped out as yet one more musical landmark goes the way of the dodo thanks again to 'gentrification' aka: Cultural Genocide...
La Ha was my hangout for years during the late 80's/early 90's. I was such a fixture, everyone knew they could find me there, indulging in their delicious chicken&black bean burritos, listening to Gun club or The Pixies. I wrote some of my best early songs and essays in their darker corners. I loved Anna Barss and her BFF, Michael Fitzgerald, aka Bitch Diva. Chef and assistant manager, the charismatic Craig Dehne and I started dating, and had a wonderfully passionate love-affair. I often helped him prep behind the counter, and did dishes in exchange for pints of beer. I joined the crew as they cleaned and fixed up out back in their FIRST attempt at a patio, and planted pansies and marigolds. Late Sunday afternoons I'd put my laundry on at the 'mat across the street and keep watch from my window seat. My cat Salem was the nephew of their official pest control officer, Bruce. Yes, for a time, La Hacienda really was my world, or at least a huge part of it. Of course life got in the way, as it often does, and everything changed. Schedules changed. Acquaintances changed. I started dancing, went back to school, and moved out of the neighbourhood. I always said I'd go back "one day", but 'One Days' just add up to more of life's regrets...
RIP La Hacienda. "Don't let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment"...I got to be part of something really fucking special.

https://www.thestar.com/…/toronto-musicians-mourn-la-hacien…
,eatery-and-home-to-countless-memories.html

MOTHER'S DAY '19

Mother's Day. My 54th Mother's Day, and my 4th without 'me Mam' (I'm watching Coronation Street as I write this. She watched it when I was a child because it reminded her of "over 'ome". Now it reminds me of 'er)

At the time of her passing, I was unable to attend her memorial-3,000 miles west, but was asked to provide a eulogy letter to be read at the service. I wracked my brain trying to come up with something, but remained blocked, unable to come up with anything appropriate in time. It was so difficult. Probably because that word best described her. Maybe not difficult, but certainly complicated. As was our relationship. It's been four years, and I'm still trying to pay tribute to her, still trying to understand her and our relationship. Like trying to unravel a birdnested fishing reel, or Gordian Knot. Complicated. A mystery wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a tortilla. She loved that joke. She had a musical, bell-like laugh. She loved to laugh. While my Father was funny-like haha funny, my mother was funny...like a dog with a breast for an eye.

Mary Florence Bateman Keurvorst was a brilliant, talented woman, sadly from a time that didn't want it's women brilliant and talented. Women had only been voting for a couple of years by the time she came along. Mary was, as they say, "Ahead Of Her Time". She was fortunate enough to find a man who, while he may not have been "Ahead Of HIS Time", loved her enough to try and understand her, the creative process, and ultimately, her illness. He indulged her artistic nature, and encouraged her to flourish. Theirs was a great, yet tragic love story; tumultuous, passionate. Mary was without a doubt, charismatic and flamboyant. She was also prone to frustrated, misdirected rages, and 'melancholia'. Back then, they said 'those artistic types were high strung'. Today, she would have been diagnosed with bi-polar disorder.

Mary's mania was not without some benefit. She became a compulsive autodidact, voraciously reading, learning, and experimenting with a number of cultural disciplines. Art, literature, music, theatre, even politics, were all subjects in which she began to excel. She showed particular talent for art, and it wasnt long before she was painting and exhibiting in Galleries.My parents had become "Bohemians".

It was this love and deep respect for culture that my mother instilled in her children. I consider it both a blessing and a curse.The difficult life of "The Starving Artist" is not only a cliche, it was "The Family Business"! 

As complicated as my Mother was, she was of course a mass of contradictions. At times she was a radical "free-thinker", open and tolerant, but other times, incredibly anachronistic, even racist and homophobic. While she espoused many beliefs of "Women's Lib", she also forbade me to get a part time job, something a lot of teenagers were starting to do. She often said outrageously incorrect things like "You'll marry well"! I was a tom-boy, and hoped for a possible future in the military, eventually graduating to law-enforcement, but she refused to let me join cadets. When I felt alienated and 'different', depressed and self-destructive, even after I had been traumatized as the result of sexual abuse from an in-law, I begged her to let me see a psychiatrist, but she refused that as well. I used to think it vanity, but now, I suspect it was the fear of her own mental illness that she projected onto me. My life would have been so different. It's one of the few things for which I never forgave her.

Sometimes, I do forgive her. Sometimes I take it back. Most of the time, I'm glad she never knew I felt this way.

 

She was a remarkable, if flawed, woman. Sometimes she smelled like powders and fine perfume, sometimes turpentine or typewriter ribbon. She loved my Father passionately, mythically, (and even carnally WELL into old age) yet she could be cruel and emasculating, breaking his heart time and time again. She defended me with the ferocity of a mother tigress against bullying teachers, yet told me countless times how she wished I'd never come to be. She was a terrible mother, she really was, and yet, she was the first best friend I ever had.

                                                             *********************************

The last time I saw my Mother, was also the only time I toured the West Coast with Classic Albums Live. I was happy that my earliest friends could finally see how far I had come, and what I had accomplished, but I was even more elated that at last some family could!

                                                                                                                                                                The afternoon of our last show was particularly poignant. We were playing West Vancouver, in a theatre where my mother had performed several times when they lived in West Van. through the 50's. She had been one of the founding administrators, and in the lobby a plaque of honour bore her name. My "Western Brother" performed an uncharacteristically great mitzvah by bringing her here this day. Since childhood, he and I have remained estranged despite several attempts on my part over the years to establish some kind of rapport.

As a young man he was arrogant and judgmental to the point of cruelty. As a result, he alienated most of the family. Now, with his best days behind him, he is burdened with unrealized aspirations and unresolved resentments. My sister says he is trying to connect but it's been so long, he doesn't know how, and at this point no one really cares anymore. A sad example of the 'too little, too late' dilemma. Sometimes, I still try.
Nothing remained of the 'Golden-Boy'. His complexion was wan and ashen and he hunched over tenting fingers. At the sight of him, my heart cracked like a spring thaw and broke wide open. Years of bitterness rushed forth in a torrent, replaced by wonderful feelings of compassion, forgiveness, pity and yes, I'll admit, some schadenfreude. I'm only human.

Despite my ambivalence toward him, I‘ll be the first to admit in his defense, that he had been great to our Mum. He was always willing and available to ferry her anywhere, a trip to the art supply store or countless visits to doctors. An afternoon outing would bring her utmost joy, as was the case on this particular afternoon, when he gently escorted her to his car, tenderly tucked her in, and brought her to the theatre to meet me and experience the show's soundcheck.

The dowager thespian entered through the stage door, and into the theatre that had practically been her second home decades before. I led her across the stage, through the wings and down the steps to take a seat out in the house. She was like a little sparrow in my hands, as fragile as a dried flower yet still as beautiful. She gleefully regaled me with tales of productions past, gesturing here and there with a graceful hand. I don't think I'd ever seen her so happy.

At last, it was time for me to check my line. I approached the mic, and the band was gracious enough to indulge me. They began the opening strains of my solo from "The Dark Side Of The Moon" called "The Great Gig In The Sky”

It is a piece of music that is not only considered one of the most technically challenging of the modern canon, but one that is emotionally difficult as well. It expresses-wordlessly-the anguish of death, and ultimately, a peaceful ascent to heaven.

And so, I sang.

For my Mother and Friend, nearing the end of her life, I sang.

For a Brother who’s love and approval I sought in vain for most of my life, I sang.

For the only two people to whom it would ever really matter again, I sang.
I sang, and didn't care if I ever sang again after this experience.

I sang the shit out of it! I’d never been more proud of myself, or the people with whom it was my privilege to perform.

My mother was so happy.

My brother, bewildered and startled and almost speechless.

I was no longer needed for the rest of the afternoon. My brother suggested we grab coffee, but not before we took a tour of the old neighbourhood. These had been far more affluent times than I had known with my family, and the old house was impressive. The landscaping was particularly stunning, and I was told my dear, late father had planted all the trees, shrubberies and hedgerows some fifty years before. I left the car to quickly pick a branch from a towering bay-laurel. Later, that night, I took it onstage with me and laid it upon the monitor at my feet-a private, comforting totem. I still have a few leaves left to this day.

Of course our visit together in the café had to end sooner than I hoped. When I had said goodbye to my mother that Christmas before, I resolved myself to the possibility that I may never see her again. This last hour was one of the greatest gifts the Gods could have ever bestowed upon me.

I hope the beauty and gravitas of the situation wasn’t lost on my "Western Brother"...

December 30th
HAPPY BIRTHDAY PATTI SMITH!

Like some Heroine, you remain strong and defiant. You honestly believe Rock and Roll can change the world for the better, but it takes more than flashing peace signs and crowing useless platitudes  to achieve unity. Like a nourishing matriarch, you provide solace and comfort to the Rock & Roll Niggers of the world. You assure us the we CAN move forward, but only when we continue to take on an establishment of entertainment corporations and wanna be impresarios who exploit the vulnerable. Outside of society is where you'll find me, with artists, poets and madmen; the brilliant, broken and disenfranchised who shred their souls to bring beauty and substance to the world, only to be vilified as abnormal, indigent, unpleasant eccentrics.

Patti, you've taught me that if our songs are our children, as so many have said, then I must defend mine with the ferocity of Ursula, The Mother Bear. You've taught me that art is the truncheon with which we will ultimately smash the state. You've taught me that tilting at a few windmills isn't as futile as it would seem. Most importantly, you remind me that art, music, 
ROCK & ROLL is indeed a noble vocation, suffering for art is not a cliche', and when music and art can teach true understanding, compassion and acceptance, only then will it change the world.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!