“What worries me is the professionalism of everything.” Irvine Welsh
Hey. I wrote this remarkable column the other day. It was brilliant - a real work of literature - 1,200 words of literary gold. I swear this thing had everything: flowing sentences, eight metaphors, romance, references to Sammy Davis Jr., and I think there was something about the Canadian Rockies. It was fabulous, and would have surely won me some type of major award and possibly a mention on CBC’s Morning North with host Marcus Schwabe. (I’m not sure if I spelled his name correctly as I no longer Google things.) The column, well, once published, I’m reasonably sure there may have even been a parade for me, like the recent Shriner shindig, except it would be me sitting on the back of a pickup waving a sword around like a menace. But, I deleted it. Gone. Poof. I guess you’ll just have to take my word for it. So I ripped this one out instead, which is neither brilliant nor does it make any reference to the Canadian Rockies. I still may end up waving a sword around, mind you - just to see what happens...
Words and rhythm. Music and writing. Music is tattooed way deep down into my genetic makeup. Jazz. Blues. Appalachian Mountain. Zydeco. Funk and soul. It’s all way down there in that sub-cellular level where things tend to get pretty weird. The music gene or “Django Gene XX14” makes my crazy DNA ladder rumble around. I need music every day, like caffeine, Judge Judy, and Nexium. I have cds stacked all over my downstairs office. Towers of them. I lose them. I give them away. I write music. Play music. Lend, borrow and steal music. I tend to over-think things and get too hung up in the mundane if I find myself in total silence. Music propels me, like a shove from a bully.
Words and rhythm. Music and writing. Right now it’s Sunday morning somewhere. Through headphones, Iggy Pop is slagging through Lust for Life, which works just fine for me. The song featured prominently in the success of Train Spotting; an adaptation of Irvine Welshs’ ragged and hazardous first novel of the same name. I’ll be going off on Irvine in a future column.
Okay, so Iggy’s still howling about Johnny Yen. Iggy’s a dangerous cat, provoking me to WRITE IN UPPERCASE, TO RUN OUT INTO THE STREET AND PUSH OVER A TRASH CAN OR COMANDEER A LITTLE RASCAL SCOOTER AND DRIVE IT INTO A TREE.
So, here’s the deal for this week’s column- guaranteed to interest a precious few - I’m going to cue up random songs from my computer then just write whatever comes to mind. No edits. No worries. No inner voices. And in the immortal words of Methuselah: If you know the words feel free to sing along!
Spontaneous Writing Experiment #1 -Iggy Pop and the Stooges- Raw Power
Last night there was a bit of a cold snap. Today it’s high noon and my beloved city has fully descended into a bleak state of absolute chaos, having nothing to do with last night’s cold snap. Today is all about blind madness in epidemic proportions. A plague of instant insanity. Out from the opened window I look down on street level. Mr. Knoph is in a blue bathrobe running down the middle of the street, screaming and shaking one bony fist at the darkening sky, while trying to keep his robe closed with his other hand. Across from my 2nd floor apartment, 930 McIntyre is on fire. I listen to glass breaking. Pops and cracks. It’s the largest house on the 200 block. A bloated McMansion owned by an Air Canada pilot with a biting pill habit. His wife, Marlene, is trying to extinguish the inferno with a kinked garden hose. I light a cigarette with the dented Zippo Mrs. Henderson gave to me after her son Henry was imprisoned for arson. She told me Henry’s Zippo would only bring back bad memories. Fire is the great equalizer. And Armageddon. And ponzi schemes. A police cruiser speeds past, almost running down Mr. Knoph, who although is still shaking his fist at the heavens, has since stopped screaming. He has also evidently given up trying to keep his robe closed. A sonic boom rattles my walls. The cruiser rams a 50 Cab broadside. Objects are now dropping from the sky. I crank my neck and look up. I squint. The sky is now full of colour and crazy shapes. Random things raining down: a green desk lamp and bent lightning rods, a white sectional sofa and a few English saddles, a roasted chicken bounces off the Camry parked by the curb - the one with the canoe strapped to the roof with frayed bungee cords, some plastic dolls, a gazebo, globe and four gazelles, and various types of both brass and woodwind instruments. Old Testaments, New Testaments and basketballs. Canadian Tire flyers. I see Mr. Knoph. I sniff. This morning I woke up with a fever. I was out last night at 100 Georges drinking with a stranger who told me about his habit of twisting the truth when it came down to the crunch. I’m thinking that I should probably yell down a warning to Mr. Knoph when he’s crushed by a plummeting John Deere riding lawnmower. I sneeze and sniff and go back to bed. Maybe I’ll feel better after some more sleep.
Spontaneous Writing Experiment # 2 – Nina Simone - Wild is the Wind
Marlow was prone to serious bouts of melancholy, spending long evenings in solitude in the study – meandering evenings of quiet contemplation of his splendid love for the incorrigible Mrs. Babbetts. Marlow could have no reserves – there was precious little room in his heart for neither reservations nor regrets. Embracing his beloved Yorkshire terrier, Baboo-Lu, with the liveliest emotion, stared into the evening’s embers flickering away in the grand fireplace. He smiled down at his pooled reflection in his wine flute, acknowledging that he could, in fact, be the happiest creature in the world, if it were not for his incurable syphilis.
Experiment #3 – Howard Baer - The Lamentation of Owen Roe O’Neill (Celtic) Mystic Fire’s Big Book of Mystic Secrets & Wizard Stuff with Unicorns
Through puffed cheeks, young Penelopope Dunderfry blew away at the thick layer of dust that had accumulated over the years atop the ancient leather-bound volume she had discovered hidden at the bottom of her grandfather’s war chest – that same very chest she had been warned never to “snoop in” on many an occasion.
“Snoopers never win,” Grandpa Atticus told her solemnly a long time ago.
As the serious cloud of dust billowed up from the leather book, Penelopope’s black cat, Mystic Fire hissed at mystical goblins unseen. Felines, from cougars to calicos have a mystical way of sensing the damned, and stuff pertaining to wizards and so forth and so on. All terribly mystical and enchanting. Ever since Mystic Fire was struck by lightning while stalking a field mouse in the back yard- the fantastic static charge blowing out her chestnut-sized kitty-kat uterus - Mystic Fire had gained extraordinary psychic feline powers. What Mystic Fire lacked in functioning reproductive organs, she had made up for with powerful powers of mystical and fantastical powers of mystical extra-perceptions. It was all very mystical and so forth and so on.
“Be quite, Mystic Fire” Penelope said to her cat Mystic Fire. “You will wake up Grandpa Atticus and then we will all be oh so terribly sorry.”
Before she was able to get her mystical hands on the old book at the bottom of the mysterious war chest, Penelopope first had to rummage through a variety of odds and ends: a blow-up rubber sheep, plastic hair rollers, a sand castle, a few buck knives, a Jesus fish fridge magnet, hat pins, jumper cables, a dented and rusty tin of powdered marsupial milk, a bloodied shirt, sixteen different passports all with Grandpa Atticus’ photo, an opium pipe and a bag of stale elephant ears.
And there it was: the prized book: Lord Scapula’s Guide to Potions and Other Real Mystical Stuff Pertaining to Unicorns. Struggling under the considerable weight of the digest, Penelopope held it up to the faint light emitting from the mystical candle stick. With laboured breath, she thumbed through random pages. A single tattered leaf of paper fell to the floor, sailing down in a zigzag fashion. Penelopope laid the book down on the floor beside her. She picked up the paper and unfolded it with a tentative touch for fear that the mystical paper would crumble in her very hands. Mystic Fire hissed again in protest.
“Hiss,” hissed Mystic Fire, real mystical like. Penelopope shouted at Mystic Fire: “Shut up or I swear to God if you wake Grandpa up I’m going to do to you what I did to your mother Perpetual Mist!”
Mystic Fire slinked away. Penelopope squinted at the paper. It was a map – a map of a world she had never seen before. Where was this place? At St Ignatius, Penelopope excelled in geography which accounted for her rivalry with her academic nemesis, Shaundra Layla Ursula Trampsy. Where were these exotic and ever-so-mystical places? Where was Viagratopia? Mystic Peter’s Peninsula? Goblin’s Caves? Ashawashikier Peaks? The Cobalt Glory Hole? Barahero’s Torkums? And where the hell was Mud Lake? As young Penelopope Dunderfry studied the ancient map through squinting eyes she was startled by a loud ‘bump’ followed by a ‘thump’ which was a little quieter than the ‘bump.’
“Who is there out there in the mystical darkness?” she whispered. She fretted that that her kettle-like heart filled with mystical popping popcorn would direct the intruder to her location. “It must just be my overactive adolescent imagination,” she told herself.
A disembodied voice whispered ever-so-softly into her ear: “Find the Kashelam Crystal, for it is your destiny.”
Penelopope turned quickly to find she was indeed alone in the dark attic. The walls suddenly seemed to close in on her. She shut the chest before bolting downstairs, past Grandpapa Atticus, who was asleep on the couch in the living room. She sprinted out the front door and into the warmth of the bright mystical sunlight. She took the mystical subterranean train to the magical Archives Repository. She had to know more about the Kashelam Crytals, deciding that the only person who would be able to help her would be the world-renowned archaeologist Dr. Uhura Zoho-Diltzmanchewugh.
In the sky above the Archives, twenty mystical unicorns had some kind of epic battle with mystical pony raiders and some really evil mystical stuff was going down and, and, uh, then…and, maybe then a knight, no a sky dwarf, came down from a rolling, tumbling thundercloud and told her who her real mother was and then a wood elf cried with a flute, muted by some mystical something and so forth and so on.
Okay, so sure it’s all crap, but at least I got a column out of it.
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