Following the Big Beat

Last night one of Canada’s great musicians released a beautiful new CD. I was lucky enough to snag a couple of tickets for my wife and I to see Stephen Fearing at Hugh’s room (another hidden treasure of our land). SF gave a tremendous performance in front of an intimate audience that included friends and family, I felt lucky to be there. The new disc is called ‘Yellowjacket’ and it is stunning. The title track is immense and all I can say is that it’s about caffeine pills, Tom Wilson and a long drive back from Nashville one night-and anyone who knows what a long drive with a crazy friend can do knows exactly what he is talking about. Everything that he has released is a must own. What Stephen Fearing does better than any other songwriter is bring truth and beauty to us. His performance though is everything. His guitar tone is golden, technique masterful, dynamics like nothing you have seen from a solo singer-he enthrals an audience and transports us which is almost impossible to do in our over distracted world these days. His live performance sets him apart from the pretenders and it’s a bit like going to school for me but in such a good, good way. To say I am inspired today is an understatement. He makes me want to burn every song I have written and start again. He shows us the real gravitas of music. He speaks about the musician’s turmoil, which in other less capable hands can turn out to be clichés and shitty road songs. But SF talks about the anguish and struggle with family/debt/stress/children/parents/relevance and age and comes out the other side with songs crafted with humility and hope. And fuck do we need this now more than ever. Musicians are like little bees trying to get to the next flower which will have more nectar, a sweeter taste, a better song, and we drag everyone we know along with us ‘cause well, that’s all we can do, and along the way we pick up people that are enchanted by the stories and the music and it all makes life just a little bit more easy to do. After a long week for us, it was a welcome distraction and a necessary dose of happiness. Thanks Stephen.

Crossroads

Our 39th Parliament was sworn in recently and got down to the business of trying to move a legislative agenda forward. The legislature is the fuel of government and as dedicated as our beauracracy is to keeping the lights on in this country we have been for the better part of what feels like a decade at almost a dead stop. The liberal government slowly was weighed down to the point of inaction by mismanagement, power generated corruption, fear and the beginnings of an internal warfare that has brought it to the point of opposition and looking inwards and on the outside looking in. I feel a bit schizophrenic when it comes to the state of our government. While on the one hand we have a conservative government precariously in power but with many more conditions in place for it's stability than the previous minority, but also harbouring a social agenda which scares the begeezes out any person who has come to believe in a Trudeauian vision of Canada. On the other hand maybe we need to have a glimpse at the alternative, however distasteful to mobilize the left in this country to redefine itself and to look at the federal government as an instrument of change and progression, that we can't let Canada turn into 13 feudal states.

I remember growing up and feeling like that the Prime Minister’s speech from the throne was more than just a handful of platitudes and backroom promises brought to the light of day to subdue the relentless power brokers that have everything but the good of the Canadian people in mind. I remember when we could feel the movement of the country toward some purpose that a wide vision was leading us, that we were being led. An infection of modern democracy in the last ten years has threatened the power of the state and that infection Linda McQuaig brilliantly outlined for us as ‘The Cult of Impotence’. Fear has driven us toward a lot of the way we lead our lives today, the fear of debt, the fear of terrorism, the fear that we will never have what was promised to us, that we will lead a better life than our parents. The modern realities that we face which, were in part due to releasing the peoples power to the banks, the IMF, and the stock market, is that government itself is afraid. We are transferring our indecision to the structure of our government. We are creating a government that does not have the power available to it create a broad agenda and we have elected politicians that have played upon our fears.

We are very much at a crossroads. This should not be confused with a fork in the road; we know very well what lays and waits for us in either direction our country takes. One to me is a failure; the current conservative direction is a rerun of neocon thought from the last 30 years that refuses to die a long overdue death because of its absence of nuance. The illiberalism of modern conservativism has been well discussed, to me it's an ideology of greyscale, even at it's lightest version-the Blair gov't, the Clinton Administration and to a certain extent the Chrétien gov't it does not inspire-(yes I get the irony of that they were all liberal democrats but that's sort of my point here). But why it remains is that conservatism fits well in our multimedia modernity of televised politics. The colour of real change is complicated, is endless and involves time, thought and the persistence of discussion-all seen as anthema to the roll up the sleeves simplicity of populist politics the New Conservative party is trying to sell. Real change means tackling 'the big issues' the ones that define us, divide us and yes scare us. The environment, the role of the state, political electoral reform, our aboriginal people, and our real place in the shaping of a new internationalism in what theorists are calling the post globalism era. I have mentioned John Kenneth Galbraith before and his book The Good Society should be required reading for every single member of our 39th Parliament. In it he outlines succinctly what could be the beginnings of dealing with the big issues. I know this all sounds naive, that we have economic issues to be chiefly concerned with and that we have to make sure the lights stay on, but if we don't ask where we are going and screaming at the people in charge of our direction we will end up nowhere fast, standing at the crossroads, sinking down while everyone passes us by.

By Grapthar's Hammer!

Galaxy Quest has to be one of the most bitingly hilarious movies ever. I love its spirit that beyond the satire lies the truth that we are just people fighting time-some with grace, and some with ray guns.