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.

use your nostrils

i just want to comment on the different smells one will encounter while travelling... i find every city or small town has its own distinctive odour..in every city i have been to in north america i find a different smell...and after all that, maybe because edmonton is my home, i miss the smell of this city most...due to the refineries i know that sometimes we can get some disgusting reeks blowing around, but for the most part we are blessed with nice clean prairie air that refreshes...there is also something nice about the river valley that is engrained into my nasal memory...so ya, next time you're going to a different city, smell this one and keep that memory, then smell the one you go to...maybe i'm just weird but i find it very distinctive...

inside the pocket of a clown

after reading the Gregoire piece the other day, i was struck by how much a love and adore the idea of taverns like the ones she writes about... at one point in time these taverns/bars/hotels were the central place in the neighborhood. They were where everyone would meet after work, where those who didn't work had a place to spend their afternoons digging themselves deeper into the 'pocket'. They in a sense, gave the community a place to congregate and thrive...But as it happens, all good things must fall and these once beautiful and cherished pieces of our community were left by the wayside...progress opened the door for further development and the older buildings were occupied by those that could not afford to go anywhere else, which in turn lowered the standard of living within them...i still remember the Cecil right on Jasper ave, about 15 years ago you could walk down that block and have 10 to 15 people ask you if you wanted to buy drugs...they would just open their hand and be holding a bunch of hash...it's almost as though it was accepted like it is in downtown Vancouver...it was more or less a crack house right on Jasper ave, fit only for the mice...i also think the smoking ban, as much as i accept it, has taken away from the authenticity of being in a bar like that...now instead of the scotch, smokes, and urinal puck stench of the commercial, it reaks like puke and booze...without the haze of tobacco, the aura is gone...

what a city

i still remember coming downtown in the early 90's from sherwood park, i was around 14 or 15...i remember there was a line of buildings where the epcor building is now...one of them was deserted and it always seemed to smell like urine back there...we tested our luck and snuck in one day to find the second floor was completely graffittied and people had even made a little fire pit...i'm surprised it didnt burn down before they tore it down...anyway, its just funny how the city changes in such a short time...
the bar buddys used to be called area 51, a metal bar in which my band played many many times...and as for flashback, i do believe the space it was in was turned into a bar again a few years ago and there were shows there....i might be wrong as i am not completely sure where it was...
and if i am correct, the first movie house in edmonton was on jasper ave and until only recently was used by ink machine tattoo, and i also practiced with one of my bands there...it was an old building and you could feel the history

cashman vs. hagen

Though i found cashman's book to be interesting, i did not feel it gave a view of edmonton that was accurate. By this i mean that the notion of the underworld was not looked at. Cashman's book basically gives us funny, short, almost anecdotal scenes of a city that not only saw hardship, but was founded in a part of the world where the weak would not survive. i hate to compare it, but the growth of a city like edmonton kinda reminds me of Knut Hamsun's "Growth of the Soil". out of nothing sprang everything, and the underbelly is what made it all happen. Hagen, on the other hand, jumps right into the underside of our city and exposes the debauchery for all it was. even though some of the details may be embellished to make the story better, i still feel that in writing the history of anything, the writer must do away with the pretenses of the normal.

what is normal is what is accepted, normalcy in many ways can never be achieved