As Spring begins in earnest here. The light, as if it could become any more generous, in fact does so and stretches like a cat who knows there is all the time in the world to stretch and contemplate lazy philosophical conundrums like the benefits of gratuitous napping versus unnecessary activity. And, of course, this pleasant planetary activity finds me gone.  Departure. Olonzac to Montpellier by road. Montpellier to Paris to Montreal by air.  Montreal to Kingston by rail.

Forecast for Olonzac on departure day:  Sunny.  16c

Forecast for Montreal on arrival day: Winter warning in effect.  10-15 cm of snow.

Timing is Everything …

So I leave a final post which contains the draft of lyrics for a song I’ve been working on here in France.  It’s a work-in-progress which will enable me to move back and forth between a life that includes vineyards not so far from the Mediterranean and a small village built into a hollow carved out of the Canadian Shield by glacier.

 I’ve been writing a song in French and English. (I love the ways that Daniel Lanois did so on Acadie.)  Stay tuned …

Ca me Fait Penser/It Makes Me Think

My life n’est pas trés difficile

Just the light here on the windowsill

My life n’est pas tres importante

toutes les choses that I don’t need but want

Toutes les choses that I don’t need but want

My life n’est pas tres importante

 Ma vie n’est pas trés difficile

Mais quelque fois that’s how it feels

Oui, quelque fois that’s how it feels

Just the light here on the windowsill

Quest-ce-que c’est?    C’est vrai   Ca me fait penser

Ca me fait penser  that right and wrong

Are verses of the same chanson

It makes me think  It makes me think

each life a song drawn out in ink

Je sais Je sais Je sais pourquoi

Je cherche le needle dans le straw

Je sais je sais je sais pourquoi

Golden vineyards comme c’est la

 Perhaps that’s why I choose to stay

Ou peut-etre c’est pourquoi  I can not say

 Ce que Je veux dire

Plus loin et trés, trés near

Plus loin et trés, trés dear

Ce que Je veux dire

 In a booth in Heaven’s Restaurant

My life n’est pas tres importante

It could have happened to anyone listening
to the Eagles Greatest Hits in the South
of France drinking red         wine.

You got your demons
you got desires …

Tangled in vines with culverts rushing
bruised and purple full and wild through every stone
village.  In any language it’s another tequila
sunrise wasted certainment mais even falling
drunk down January’s moutainside

it’s easy to see
how the light kisses
the grapes that aren’t even close
to being here yet and how impossible the whole
enterprise.  The soil stubborn gold
rocky and holding on
to thousand-year-old stories

of how it might be
done if your pray hard
enough imagine a joyless
toil so calloused that blisters bear
fruit.  Old men spit and shit

and swear they saw it
coming—a split
second held in slow
motion.  Ancient stone abbeys

cut into stone hillsides  Blood
and stone. The cross to bear
so great.  You got your
demons. Chacque person
different chacque person

la meme: pass the bottle share
the shame. Blessed is Thy Holy
Name. Slow motion and a split
decision.  A falcon slices through
your vision.  Times like this it’s easy

to remember your patient brother your loving
sister. Your parents drunk the night you first
kissed her. And it was music—the song
building but what did you expect
for  3 euros?  Oh, loneliness will blind

you in between the dark
and the light.  The woman with her hair tied
back. Her raven voice a singsong silhouette
nothing but sleek profile.  Dress
over her head now lifting and
falling naked as language.

You got desires.

Traffic snarls are for Paris
only and how naked she
is there.  You wish far away
and still you come
close.  The bottle catches blue
way up the neck half way
to full throttle.  But who could sing

that fucking high?  Oh, coming right behind
you swear I’m going to find you.

Swimming inside
the full-throated
swallow. In any
language.  Ce que je veux
dire.  This is what

I see every time
in the mirror.  One that really
screams.

If you read the previous entry, I’ve been steeping in the sounds of Olonzac.  I walk the twisting inner corridors of the village both day and night and find myself listening either through the strangeness of a foreign body or through a set of headphones connected to my ‘Zoom H4n.”  I’m not sure I’ll ever get over the self-conscious feeling of looking like an amateur ethnographer (or just an oddball).

Anyway, I mentioned the church bells, the snippets of the very musical French voice, and The Voice.  I recorded some samples of each of these and then, aided and inspired by “Bistro Fada,” a song by Stephane Wrembel from the soundtrack of Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris,” my daughter Zinta and I created une petite paysage sonore.

Have a listen.  No red wine required …

Sounds of Olonzac S’Il Vous Plait

I have arrived in France for a six-week stay with my family. We’re living in a small village called Olonzac in the south of France.  Make no mistake, this is the heart of wine county.  The vineyards look bleak and dreary at this time of year (mid-January) but the grapes from previous growing seasons, now bottled and selling for just a few euros in the local shops, taste wonderful and serve as a reminder that the exquisite light and ocre-coloured soil are magic, indeed.

Making art?

Not yet, not yet.  I’m soaking in scenery and letting some of the french language roll through the space where most often my ‘english language voice’ tracks the muse and takes notes on what I’m experiencing.

Sounds. I am beginning to record them.  We live in an old stone building in the village where the narrow alleys twist and turn to create an ancient labyrinthe. Stone walls, many in beautiful disrepair, lead deeper and deeper into this thousand year-old village.

From my shuttered window on the 2^nd floor, I have begun to record the bells of the local church and the sounds of voices and footsteps that echo in the alley below.  There is also a strange disembodied voice that emanates through loudspeakers situated throughout the village informing invisible residents of the local goings-on. (Anyone seen ‘The Triplets de Belleville”???) These announcements are usually followed by a quick hit of musique (a crooning chanteur).

These sounds are beginning to find their way into ambient soundscapes.  Good things to follow, the Muse willing …

Of course this is how it must begin:

standing on any green hill

at the mercy of all blue rivers,

reinventing the colours of sky.

Three perfect ravens.

Waiting for the moon

to find a form for the planet’s giving way:

shade born out of light.

As a matter of course,

the palette gives and receives

in combinations until the body

is no longer a body.

Whisper the incantation

as it was given, as breath.

Walk around the canvas three times,

counterclockwise for luck and momentum.

Wind the world up until

it spins on spit and sweat

and the bloody pitch of a fallen

pine aware of nothing but

the first drop of rain repeating

itself—three times counterclockwise,

putting the hex on cliché: out of the blue

words fall on open fields,

plant themselves and wait

for the world to imagine itself

out of a seed or run its course like an

avalanche down a garden path

ripping up colour as it goes.

The second launch will be held Thursday December 8 at 7:30 p.m. at Studio22 Open Gallery. Located in the Market Square in Kingston at 320 King St.E. 2ndFloor. RSVP 613 546 7461 or toll-free 866 842 9895 or informationPlease@studio22.ca

As a final note, there will also be some highly secretive and clandestine readings at undisclosed locations where poetry is considered too dangerous and subversive to be held in public. If you would are interested in hosting such a reading please let me know. (All that’s required for a reading is a few interested folks who love to be read to.)

With thanks Gary

Thanks to all of you who have been taking the music home with you and for your continued support …

Happy August. There’s been lots going on this summer. I did my annual summer library tour in July promoting 2 new recordings, both live performances in Yarker. I recorded 2 live shows with Sheesham & Lotus in March 2011, one at the Yarker Family School, the other at Riverside United Church. Both of these records are, in many ways, placeholders to keep things moving as I continue to work on the long-awaited “What’s the Big Idea?!? album. Said album is proceeding slowly but surely and I can see a tiny light at the end of the tunnel (which is not really a tunnel so much as a busy life). I’m just completing the Audio Archive Project for the Yarker Family School, library and community under the categories of ‘Songs’ ‘Stories’ and ‘Sounds’

In other summer fun, I was an instructor at the Blue Skies Music and Arts Camp in July which was followed by Blues Skies Music Festival. Fireweed did a Sunday afternoon concert featuring the songs of Bruce Cockburn. Blue Skies also saw the debut of Sedan Delivery, a 4-piece band that performs Nothing but Neil (Young). It was a raging success. Rob Unger from Fireweed and myself joined forces with drummer Pete Bowers and guitarist Kevin Bowers. Wow. Please stay tuned for more action and more music.

With thanks

Gary

Meantime, as Neil Young says,

“Live music is better, bumper stickers should be issued.”