SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION!!!!!!!!!!!!

i would like to cordially invite any of you music lovers to the release of my bands new cd. our band is called Sleeping Girl. our new album is called Tonight and we are playing a bar show at the velvet underground. that is the bar underneath the Starlite room, i'm not sure what it is called now though. that show is on April 17...our all ages show is at the Avenue Theatre on 118 ave and 90st...it used to be the avenue skatepark but the have renovated and the sound is amazing now...sooooo come one come all!!!!!!!!!!!! if anyone reads this and is interested, check out some of our music on my space....www.myspace/sleepinggirl....or check out our fairly new facebook page under the name sleeping girl...

now, part two...

after reading so much literature about edmonton i have been translating my thoughts into what i seem to do best, poetry...this is a piece that i may revise in the future, who knows...it does not have a title yet but i want to hear what any of you have to say about it...


Gazing out over the city of Edmonton
the bar, a 7th floor one
The trained eye can follow the river valley
through the modernity that makes up its banks
The rest just have to believe it's there

The very river my great grandfather crossed
from Strathcona
to play his trombone for the crowd on the north shore
A trombone my family once owned
gold and silver plated

The very river i boated down when i was a child
My parents, brother, and I
thrown in a 5 man dingy and set adrift

The very river in which i saw a man in the process of throwing himself
I never did see him jump
but he was hanging off the high level bridge
Ready
I suppose my parents didn't want their five year old son
seeing that - my gaze quickly averted

I sit here now in the U of A campus bar
remembering all of this
Copious amounts of beer helping me
and I'm glad i can
It wasn't until we left the city that it all fell apart
It wasn't until later

Drinking in the campus pub and i need a smoke
a joint
another beer
"Hey barkeep," Shane looked up at me like I was mad, "I need another beer."
"Barkeep huh," he looked at me

As he slid it in front of me I slid
back into my daydream
I slid into obscurity
I slid back into life
My eyes gaze out in the direction of my old house
near Westmount
The Woodcroft neighborhood
From the 7th floor I look
in search of those streets where I came into being
Those streets where everythiong was without pain
Brilliant and grand
The memories cast in a light of hope
of a time when there was no wrong

I wonder, if I still had that trombone
would I have learned to play it
If my parents had stayed together
would I have spent more time in a boat
If I hadn't seen that man jumping
would I be the man I am today

If I hadn't grown up beside this river
during those first formidable years
would i need this beer to think about it
Or would I use it to conjour up dreams
of some other river
in which my childhood washed away
in which I was made the man I am

The North Saskatchewan
Builder of cities
cultures
and myself

i dont really know if my point was made clearly enough in tuesdays class. i do feel that Olivers actions were a form of racism, one of many forms. what i meant by it was that in their culture, relitive to them, they were doing what was best for what they thought. there is no question that we can look back at the atrocities commited by not only Edmontonians, but most Albertans in that time range, and feel a sense of disgust. Moving the 'Indians' away from land that was profitable to the 'whites' was their way of becoming more powerful. with the opening of residential school across Canada, they destroyed many diverse cultures by forcing religion upon them, not to mention the blatant sexual abuse that took place. i am by no means defending Frank Olivers actions but in their day it was normal. ethically, relativism is a poor starting ground in the fact that anything can be justified due to the thoughts and beliefs of those occupying that time frame. there was nothing right about what they did and it seems to me that more people should know this story.