(Poem) What's that sound?

This poem was written for the Jen Mesch Dance Conspiracy performance at the Centennial Centre for Interdisciplinary Science (CCIS) building at the University of Alberta on March 12, 2015. The poem was inspired by radio-telescopic recordings of the sounds made by the planets in our solar system.

All the celestial bodies referenced here are in the video linked above. Enjoy!


What’s that sound?
Yes, that one
The ringing echoes
of the orb that wears the crown
This is Radio Free Jupiter!
Pugnacious punk ambient radiophonic red-spot rock ‘n’ roll
ringing through the solar system
like it was hers to begin with
Big sexy gas giant, switched-on solar circuitry with storms to burn

What’s that sound?
No, that one
That rumbling in the shadows
that frosty splash of sulphur ash aside the colossus
Hadal contrabass counterpoint
Volcanic blasts splattering at the swirling gaseous canvas
spread across its sky
Ionic artspace, Jackson Pollock studio, Jovian circuitry, silver and gold pockmarks
with guttural undulating undertones

What’s that sound?
No, that one
That swirling urgency
that plaintive pulse
from the dark side of the ringed one
singing and sobbing
Miranda is bleeding, scratched and forlorn
Saturnine by nature and temperament
forever howling at the canopy of night

What’s that sound?
Not that one, that one
For whom does that bell toll?
Ringing like arctic blasts
through a hundred haunted bell towers
Is this the solemn chill that calmed the waters to somnolent Sri Lanka?
The dissonant chimes that calls the Milky Way to prayer?
Váruna, Ouranos, sawing sideways through cosmic currents
buzzsaw of the beyond, slicing space with morbid grace

What’s that sound?
Yes, that one
That splash of blue ocean
amid the black beyond
delicately orchestrated typhoons
of silver strings
rhapsody in cobalt and ultramarine
Holst never stopped to listen to the blue voice
The Mystic, it turns out, was also the romantic

What’s that sound?
The slow hiss
Hubble’s dilemma
That pulsing spectral omnipresence
the gears of the cosmic wheelhouse
locking and grinding
forever stretching the perimeter
of the Eridanus Supervoid
Hello darkness, my old friend

In space everybody can year you scream
hear you scratch and rage against the void
skip along the stone paths of the Kuiper Belt
and sing along with mournful Sedna’s
Skeleton Woman blues
pausing at Señor Gomez’s burger bar
before a night swim in the gently lapping magenta lagoon nebula
Sounds like a nothingth of an eternity in the universe
where superlatives reign supreme and dark matter matters

What’s that sound?
Which one?

I looked in the mirror, Jim. And this is what I saw.

First of all, can somebody smarter than me please explain to me what the hell is going on in this province?? First we were suddenly broke and hemorrhaging money left, right, and centre thanks to sagging global oil prices. Then, somehow, inexplicably, the province was running a surplus. And now gas prices are back up to nearly a buck a litre. And wasn't the whole gas price slide a punitive measure by the OPEC bigwigs against the psycho KGB cowboy in Moscow and his pals in Tehran and Damascus? I don't get it.

Whatever the case, our boom-and-bust economy is now, apparently, bust again, and our esteemed crown prince now tells us, in a nutshell, that it's our own fault. According to Jim Prentice, we all have to “look in the mirror” and take responsibility for the province’s precarious financial situation. OK Jim, I take responsibility. But what I want to know at this juncture is how much responsibility I, personally, should take. After all, I'm not from Alberta originally and have only been taking advantage of government programs and opportunities here since mid-2008. Does that mean I'm less responsible for our present mess than someone who's lived here all their life, while at the same time more so than someone who just arrived?

If we were to portion out blame equally, among all Albertans, we would technically be looking at about 7.6 seconds of penance per Albertan per year. Given that there are now 4,146,000 of us in this province, and 365 days in a year, that's literally how our wages of guilt would be monetized. You know, like the flat tax our esteemed leaders still stubbornly stand by.

But that's based on the assumption that everybody currently living in Alberta is equally culpable for getting us in the pickle that we're in. Which, as I previously mentioned, strikes me as unfair given our current rate of population growth. Alberta's population grew by 3.8 per cent in 2014, which means that of the aforementioned 4,146,000 people, about 150,000 just arrived from elsewhere, and frankly it would be unfair to saddle them with this burden of economic shame. Especially given our provincial leaders' heretofore urgent tone with regards to impending labour shortages here.

This reduces our pool of culpable Albertans to around 3,996,000. That raises our individual burden of guilt to around 7.9 seconds. Still totally manageable. That said, I don't think our dear leader would see it that way. Clearly Alberta's urban centres bear more of the blame than rural areas, given their pesky demands for better roads, better transit, more schools, more . . . everything, frankly. As of 2011 (the most recent statistics available), 83 per cent of Albertans resided in urban areas. That takes us down to roughly 3,316,000 people who are really blameworthy. So if you've lived in an urban area in Alberta for more than one full year, you now officially have to feel bad for 9.5 seconds a year.

Not so fast. At least 20 per cent of the remaining population is 18 years old or under, and clearly they can't be held responsible for the mess we're in - much as we'd like to blame them. So that takes us down to about 2,652,800 culpable individuals, or about 11.9 annual seconds of penance. And that's more substantial - more time than most of us stand with our heads bowed and our eyes closed on Remembrance Day.

And of course we haven't even begun to talk about the province's urban Aboriginal population, from whose ancestors the land now called Alberta was stolen in the first place, or the province's ethnic Japanese, Chinese, Ukrainian (that's at least 10 per cent of Edmonton), and Afro-Canadian populations, who at various times have faced fierce discrimination. Or women, who, it turns out, earn less than 65 per cent of their male counterparts in this province, putting Alberta nearly on par with South Korea, the OECD country with the worst gender wage parity. And while we're at it, LGBTQ Albertans, who still suffer from de-facto top-down discrimination through the provincial government's refusal to mandate gay-straight alliances in schools, get a pass as well.

So who are we left with? Basically a coterie of overpaid straight white men who live in urban centres and occupy positions of power. In other words, people like you, Jim. Perhaps you need to, ahem, take a look in the mirror.

Home is where the food is (a 107 Ave serenade)

Source: Faces of 107 Avenue

Adobo creative suites

Masala motion pictures

Mad about saffron

And high on wild rosewater nocturnes and the sweet Rumi-nations of old Tehran

Footsteps springy like fresh injera

With a fire-roasted coffee and frankincence chasers at my heels

Striding sing-song down the Avenue of Nations

Calibrating my olfactory GPS; new-world coordinates in old-country code

The dhows of Gwadar, Suquṭra, Muqdisho

Safely moored on a verdant bend in the North Saskatchewan

Bringing sustenance and satiety to shivering winter citizenry

Cracked cardamom pods, frim-fram shawarma sauce

Weaponized wild rice and a backup bottle of chili sauce for that extra zing

Here on the Ave this is kind of our thing

Some say home is where the heart is

But the heart falters when the stomach lies empty

Others say home is where the money is

But money for nothing? Have these chickpeas for free!

Home is where the food is

Where continents and condiments collide in cast-iron kitchen pots

With fierce chillies, midnight meat sweats, and moose nose stew with bannock sliders

Treaty 6 treats with Tagalog tagalongs

And palak paneer amid the backdrop of a bigos and kubasonic boomtown

It’s everything that’s good to eat

Right out there on the street

Yeggs benedict for breakfast

E-town empanadas for lunch

Prairie chicken Kiev with a side of doro. Wot?

It’s all here. It’s all us.

Give me a home where the free-range buffalo roam (out at Elk Island)

Where the kheer and the cantaloupe come out to play for dessert

Where seldom is heard a discouraging Urban Spoon word

And the skies are as wide open as our doors, as big as our portion sizes

And as vivid and alive as our spicecraft and foodscape

Welcome home

After the Artery - 6 ways Edmonton's arts community can continue to survive and thrive

Source: John Lucas, Edmonton Journal

If you're a member of Edmonton's arts community, you're probably ready to slouch down on the nearest park bench for a good long cry right now. That's assuming you haven't already done this. We're not even two months into 2015, and the year has thus far, for a lack of a better term, sucked balls. It all started with the heartbreaking demise of the venerable Roxy Theatre in an early morning fire on January 13. And now artistically inclined Edmontonians are reeling from the loss of yet another iconic art space, The Artery, which yesterday announced it would be closing its doors for the last time at the end of March.

Both of these occurrences would be heartbreaking enough in isolation,  but the sad fact of the matter is that it's nothing new in this town. The list of performance and visual arts spaces that Edmonton has lost, or is on the verge of losing, has begun to resemble a list of names chiselled on a war memorial. Last year saw the demise of the Avenue Theatre. In 2013 the Haven Social Club, a jazz-focussed basement dive much loved by MacEwan University music students, bid the city farewell. Further back in time, the legendary Sidetrack Cafe, which once upon a time played host to the likes of Canadian icons k.d. lang, Colin James, and Blue Rodeo, bid the world adieu in 2007.

The list of dead venues in Alberta's capital city has become so extensive that the Edmonton Heritage Council has recently embarked on a Dead Venues Project as part of its Edmonton City As Museum initiative, an admirable attempt to keep the city's indie/alt-rock heritage alive. While tributes are always welcome, such archival projects are cold comfort to Edmonton's artists who continue to see venues yanked from under their feet. No area of town has been harder hit than Old Strathcona, the once-spirited heart of bohemian Edmonton, which, thanks to skyrocketing commercial real estate prices, has seen much of its arts scene migrate to more economical pastures, with the Catalyst Theatre (soon to be relocating to the Maclab Theatre at the Citadel) being its latest economic refugee.

All this, of course, is happening at a time of great economic uncertainty in the province as a result of plummeting oil prices and a bewildering budgetary Chicken Little sky-is-falling performance on the part of our newly minted Progressive Conservative Pharaoh. (For the hammiest theatre show in town, just pop into the Alberta Legislature when the house is in session.) For people immersed in the arts community, as well as in post-secondary education (and I'm eyeball-deep in both - lucky me), this means cutbacks. Yes, that Alberta speciality. All this in spite of the fact that the government somehow, inexplicably, seems to have come up with a budgetary surplus (because, you know, we're broke) and that cutting funding to the arts to balance the budget makes about as much sense as shaving your head to lose weight.

The irony, of course, is that Edmonton's arts scene has never been more vibrant than it is at present. On any given night in this city there's a bewildering array of performance and visual art on offer in the city, albeit in a slow but steadily contracting constellation of venues. Edmonton is well known for its big-name festivals - FolkFest, NextFest, the Fringe, the Street Performers Festival, the Poetry Festival, and so on, but that scarcely scratches the surface as to what's going on. As a relatively new Edmontonian (a resident here since the fall of 2008), it's taken me quite a few years to fully appreciate the quality and quantity of artistry in my adopted hometown - even in the middle of winter when it's an uphill task to persuade winter-weary residents to trudge through minus-twenty temperatures to check out a poetry slam or a modern dance spectacle.

Yes, Edmonton's arty folk are a stubborn, tenacious bunch who can probably survive anything. But why must their existence always be such a perilous one? The problem is an economic one (as well, let's admit, of economic priorities on the part of the city's mandarins). Regrettably, artists get screwed in both good and bad economic times. In bad times, funding for the arts invariably gets cuts. In good times, real estate prices inflate to the point where theatre companies, club owners, and other artistic stakeholders can no longer stay above water.

So what can be done to support the arts in this city so as to curb the tide of venues going under? I'm no expert, but here are a few ideas.

1) Go see more shows.

This might sound flippant, but seriously, go see something cool. On a random Tuesday evening, even. Edmonton may not have the prestige of Paris or New Orleans, but the flip side to that is that artists in this city are far more accessible than they are in larger centres. There are improbable art galleries run by medical doctors who really love the arts. There's a devoted (and I mean VERY devoted) heavy metal scene. There's typically three nights a week of wild electronic music at Bohemia. And there's no shortage of theatre, dance, and whatnot. Go to yeglive,ca and find something cool - and go to it! C'mon, you're too young to spend every evening crocheting scarves and taking Instagram photos of your cats!

2) Get to know your local community league.

Edmonton's outsized artistic scene owes a large debt to the city's longstanding network of local community leagues. While not an exclusively Edmontonian phenomenon, Edmonton's community league system is, as far as I know, unique in its extensiveness and civic clout, thanks in no small part to steady funding from the municipal government. If you're an Edmonton-based artist, volunteering for your local community not only gives you the opportunity to lobby on behalf of your fellow artists at the neighbourhood level (i.e. where it really counts), but also gives you affordable access to community league facilities, whose purpose it is to serve as a local venue for stuff the community wants. Not an opportunity any artist would want to pass up.

3) Think outside the box in terms of venues.

Capital A "Art Venues" may be in full-tilt contraction mode in Edmonton, but with anywhere between 18 and 22 cranes punctuating the city's skyline like boreal giraffes, buildings are most definitely not. Moreover, with more per-capita green space than any other Canadian city and a larger land area than Toronto (with about a third of the population), the city is not lacking in places to perform. They just might not be traditional performance spaces. Edmonton's perennially overachieving modern dance scene has, out of both necessity and ingenuity, turned the city's great outdoors into its venue, with the undisputed masters of this being Mile Zero Dance and its artistic director Gerry Morita, whose venues have ranged from Churchill Square to the river valley park system to the delightfully trashy Aurora Motel in the city's unloved industrial west end.

Others are doing the same thing. I myself have had the honour of being invited to contribute a spoken word component to the latest instalment of Jen Mesch Dance Conspiracy Takes Over The Science Building. Dancer/choreographer/science nerd Jen Mesch is another Edmonton artist with a penchant for improbable locations, ranging from Edmonton's river valley to actual caves. And the University of Alberta, with its picturesque cliffside setting atop the river valley and its motley assortment of fascinating structures, is a cornucopia of potential performance spaces - including some actual performance spaces like the amusingly toilet-shaped Timms Centre.

4) Forge stronger ties with arts communities elsewhere in Alberta.

Edmonton is essentially an island city. At least that's how it feels much of the time. But while it's a relatively isolated city, it's not really that far from other pockets of civilization. Calgary is a three-hour drive to the south, and is no slouch when it comes to the arts. And it's a treasure trove of great venues. Edmonton's once vibrant underground punk scene may be history now, but Calgary's still has quite a bit of life to it thanks in no small part to places like Vern's Tavern, a venue that helped launch the careers of bands like Sheepdogs and Marianas Trench, and continues to provide an open stage to the weirdest, most obnoxious acts around - bands like "witch punk" Riot Grrrl revivalists Hag Face, my current YYC faves.

Even closer to Edmonton is the increasingly energetic live music scene in Red Deer, which, thanks to Alberta's explosive population growth in recent years, now has a population close to that of Reykjavik, Iceland. It's not a scene I know well at all, but reliable sources tell me that it's getting steadily better - at least on the musical front. Even further south in Alberta is the oddball town of Lethbridge, where heavily bearded and headscarf-clad Hutterites and Mennonites rub shoulders with heavily bearded and keffiyeh-clad hipsters from the University of Lethbridge who frequent events like the Lethbridge Electronic Music Festival and more regular arty happenings at Owl Acoustic Lounge.

Anybody who thinks of Alberta as simply Edmonton, Calgary, and a hillbilly hinterland needs a Lonely Planet update. The problem, of course, is that the province of Alberta has a larger land mass than France and a far worse transportation infrastructure, which means that unless you plan on sleeping in your car (which is only a viable option half the year in this province, and even then not a very attractive one), you need lodging in whatever municipality you find yourself in - particularly given that your typical artsy event ends after the last Red Arrow of the night leaves the station for Edmonton. A network of dedicated artist crash pads on either end,in said cities, perhaps modelled on New Orleans' Musicians' Village, would solve this problem.

5) Forge stronger ties with communities within the city.

Edmonton is distinctly unlike places like Vancouver and Toronto in its relative lack of distinct ethnic enclaves. With the exception of the South Asian community in Mill Woods (an area also replete with new Canadians from elsewhere around the globe) and the East African community on and around 107 Avenue (forever the starting point in the city for whichever immigrant community is the most recent), Edmonton's multicultural population is a true salad bowl. There is nearly as much Ethiopian food in Edmonton's Little Italy than there is Italian, and the city's Chinatown is decidedly more Vietnamese than Chinese. And given China and Italy's past predilections for invading Vietnam and Ethiopia respectively, it's poetic justice in a way.

That said, Edmonton's artistic mainstream (i.e. white people) could all do a better job engaging with the city's many and varied ethno-cultural communities. The spoken word/slam poetry scene is excelling on that front thanks in no small part to Titilope Sonuga and her heir apparent Ahmed Knowmadic of the Breath in Poetry collective - slam poetry at its least obnoxious and most inclusive. Edmonton is also home to what may now be the country's largest urban Aboriginal population, and with it one of Canada's most energetic Aboriginal arts scenes - ranging from Métis country music to raw rez hip hop and stand-up comedy. It's out there. You just need to seek it out.

6) Fight the power.

Yep, put on your best gold Flava Flav teeth, hang a clock around your neck, and fight the power that be. But in all seriousness, the city of Edmonton would have far fewer historic buildings standing were it not for its citizens' willingness to get organized and fight the forces of organized redevelopment. Much of Old Strathcona would have been razed back in the 1970s were it not for the grim determination of its residence to save its innumerable architectural gems. Today the city's venerable McDougall United Church is the latest historic building on the chopping block, and while its future remains very much in doubt, a campaign to save the building has recently shifted into high gear.

Sometimes you just have to be like Arthur Dent in the Hitchhiker books and lie in front of the bulldozer. And call it a work of art. Because sometimes it is.

Skindiving in Tokyo Bay

Photo by Natalie Kelsey (deviantart.com)

The sea wall shoots straight down

Beyond the threshold of the eyes

Beneath the inky evanescence above

And the silky nothingness below

That centrifuge where the mind stops minding

And the extremities embrace the moonless chill

And in the unblinking undertow

Yamashita’s gold glistens, then vanishes

Yet another bioluminescent blur

Beyond the precipice of the abyssal plain

Where spider crabs bide their time

And searchlights dissolve like sugar photophores

The curve of your back

Your pearldiver skin

Freezeframes in front of me as I fumble

Dusktreading and night terrorfoaming

Over angry tectonic ridges, rusted warships

And the barnacled skeletons of young men pressed into death

By imperial dreams and decrees

And yet still you urge me forward through the cross current

Beckoning with a supple serenity to surrender

To the will of the waves and the boundaries of reason

When one climactic zone transitions to another

Do we change our name or simply inch forward as we are

Sure . . . unsure

Shore . . . no shore

Sure . . . unsure

Shore . . . no shore

それ . . . あれ

Why don’t you turn around to face me

As I flail about amidst the black surge

Edo-wan at dusk is lonely beneath the skin

At odds with the detritus below and the neon crescent wrench

That grasps it tight at night

When the denizens of the depths recoil from reach

Why don’t you relight, ignite, send a pulse, a flair

At least make clear

That your crystal tips and grey-eyed equanimity

Were no deep-sea deceit, midwater mindfuck mirage

Minding your own business on the seabed is no trouble at all

When you were there all along and doing it anyway

Skindiving in Tokyo Bay

Past the shored-up satiety of Odaiba

Past the rusted-through remnants of the showy and the Showa

Past the echo-bait of subterranean human mazecraft

Past where the plateau pauses, then drops into the deep beyond

That place where the sawn edges of the Pacific parted ways

Leaving only memories of electric Taisho and the swordsharpeners of the Shitamachi

Blades brandished to keep the merchants at bay

Skindiving through the black machinery of now

Moorings loosened and discarded

Caution fed to the crabs, eyeless in the cold abyss

Reaching out to your lips with ease and understated grace

Shore . . . no shore

Sure . . . unsure

Shore . . . no shore

Sure . . . unsure

それ . . . あれ

Shreds of red sky refract through the surface zone

Twilight ignites with new dreams and tender memories

Sexy exits, sleek décolage
Runway lights through the depths signalling a bridge beckoning to the abyssal plain below

Beyond the Minamibōsō boundary and into the open ocean

Where no one will dare follow

Where drunken tengu sharks swim sentinel

Round the rusted hulls of prison ships and drowned memories

That place where chemosynthesis keeps me warm

Where all our junctions jut out to face the spectral surface

The weight of four million square feet of sensory overload

Rolls my eyes back as my back imitates the nautilus, twirling and fading into you

And through the midwater zone

Curviline contours shade in and out of sight

Beyond the convection of currents into the discrete vocabulary of night

Ribbons, cloaks and shields tumble to the depths

As my senses lose all defences

And sea and sky turn black and fiery phosphorescent

I’ve seen you here in the sightless jagged caverns of the hadal zone

Shimmering self, alive as angry weight attacks my eardrums

Sparks flying upwards, depth charges blowing holes through my sense of space and self-imagination

No choice at all but to follow the pinpricks of light and crawling cloudbursts of belief

Maps of the universe splashed across the void

In violent disarray

Sure . . . unsure

Shore . . . no shore

Sure . . . unsure

Shore . . . no shore

それ . . . あれ

The depths breathe and churn

Viperfish stir from their sleep

Shipmarks dissipate in distant darkness

We venture on inch by endless inch

Your tenderness and spark my only beacons

Your sonar my only sight

Nothing left but to face the light

And dive deep through rifts and currents

Ocean sinew unconstrained by mind or pressure

And then the tsubo markers of the ocean floor open outwards

With soft landings in sheets of silt ensured

Alone together enveloped in empty space

Freezeframe, endgame, freeze still, stay the same

There’s no pain in paralysis

Grasping hold of the moment and never letting go

Even as the silt and sediment scratch the membrane, erode the nerve endings

Hollow reeds bending and snapping

Broken on our piece of seabed

All my fibres, all your curves, connected and alive

Safely sheltered from the angry currents above

Beyond the ridges and rift valleys that tear at our senses

Leaving only echoes of their teeth-grinding tension

Growing softer and more distant

As we settle in for the long night

Shore . . . no shore

Sure . . . unsure

Shore . . . no shore

Sure . . . unsure

それ . . . あれ

あれ

あれ

あれ


This poem was written for the Mile Zero Dance's show Without Borders - and specifically for a dance-spoken word collaboration with the amazing dancer/choreographer/human being Jen Mesch. It was performed with Jen at dc3 Art Projects in Edmonton on February 20 and 21, 2015.

A Poem About Heartbreak

I could couch this poem in any manner of metaphor

Take your pick

How about plate tectonics?

Crust rent asunder – the substrate to your super-narrative

How about butterflies?

Forty-eight hours to live and wreak havoc on everything around you

Or bullet ants

Woven into an Amazonian initiation glove

Temporarily tranquilized by shamanic smoke

Only to wake up in a biting stinging frenzy of self-actualization

But no

You don’t deserve literary devices

Poetic subterfuge will simply edify your ego further

Truth is

You’re your own natural disaster

Unworthy of insect similes or geological symbolism

After all the ant dies when the glove is discarded

The butterfly falters and fades, leaving only melted wings and empty cocoons in its wake

Plates collide with continents

But you get to go on being you, insouciant you

You and your Gospel of Luke and your daddy-issue flotsam

Yahweh, Vader – take your fucking pick

It’s all the same to the plebs left behind

The unseen casualties of your catastrophegraph

Now just another set of muddy footprints

On my weather-worn tatami

Yet another prick through the packing sheets of snap-crackle-pop monogamy

Calculated breakups in the name of destiny fulfillment

No arc, no character development, no shimmering soliloquies

I’m not your plot device – and you don’t get your pick of mine

And if your dreams of love and heroism simply shrivel on the vine

Then this shitty little poem about heartbreak

Has fulfilled its fuction as assigned

(Poem) The Sacred

Photo by Allison Nichols, December 30, 2014

The sacred heartbreakers are codebreakers, armed with usernames and passwords
They enter, scramble with our circuitry and steal our SIM cards
Leaving us to writhe and reel through the consequences
Of their consequence-free cosmos
They leave us wondering why the hell we invited them in in the first place
And in doing so remind us of why we live and breathe
And of the sacred faults in our holy programming
We are alive - and that's kind of our own problem
We feel, we crave connectivity - and that's most definitely our own problem
We seek to share with others the fiber of our fabric - and this is definitely a terrible idea
And lest we forget, the sacred heartbreakers remind us of the futility of feeling
And hoist down our hearts from their swingsets on the ceiling

The sacred serenades emanate through iTunes and AM radio
Country boys from Kainai and Cowley through the Crowsnest Pass
All telling us to head on down to the riverside
With that ever-elusive gurrrrrl with five R's, double-D's and those jeans painted on
Leaving us wondering what river I'm supposed to turn off at
And whether the Oldman River Dam is a good scenic place to have sex
Why not? The water gushes, rushes and electrifies
Together with the towering turbines amid the fescue grass of the southwest
While the wind drowns out the drone of Chantelle J, Mountain Radio
Stopping here was the best idea ever
And lest we forget, that J-shaped scar from that twilight tumble
Will snap us back in a second without a fumble

The sacred coping mechanisms are always alive and ready
Kicking into action whenever we need them the least - and the most
They embarrass us in public, forever reminding us
Of how fucking underwhelming our better angels can be
Especially when they're drunk, stoned and overdrawn after a month off their medications
These mechanisms are inevitably embarrassing
Until they remind us of our own humanity, and the humanity of others
Whose better angels' behaviour we're quicker to forgive than our own
It's not our fault we're all walking disasters
In scripture we were rigged for reptilian recoil, and in science built to bloom and bust
And lest we forget, the universe's coping mechanism is simply to keep on exploding and rebuilding
Is that any better than any of ours - or more fulfilling?

The sacred fallen ones teach us a lesson in humility and focus
Provided we're awake enough to hear it
That guy who fell on his ass on the black ice ahead of us
That sad figure who disappeared in the labyrinth of Lagos after a sweet e-serenade from the son of Sani Abacha
And that nameless crazy lady down in Georgia, Alabama and windswept Wakayama
All telling us to pay a bit more attention than we currently are
And what we might do differently
Buzzfeed tells us to feel smug, but experience dictates otherwise
Reminding us that we're all someone's cautionary tale, their sacred stupid-person
And lest we forget, we all have a rendezvous with destiny
Just around the corner - you'll see

The sacred walk is the one we all feel compelled to start anew
Every time we buy a new calendar at the mall kiosk
Switching Doctor Seuss with Penguins, Puppies with Monster Trucks, all as arbitrary as ourselves
And each new skeleton we grow every seven years or so seem to irk onlookers all the more
Even as we're supposed to be striding through the Serengeti stronger and more springingly than before
The sacred walk is one to be taken as lightly and lotus-footedly as possible
Shedding the scorns and scars of bygone barfights and blunt force trauma
Marking our own time, righting wrongs and wronging rites of passage
Refusing to scream for attention through the unforgiving lens of McLuhan's bastard Zuckerberg baby
The medium is the medium
And lest we forget, see Thermodynamic Law Number Three
And absolute zero is wherever we make it be

The sacred ones are our fellow voyagers
The wondrous weirdos that latch onto our lives and hold on for dear life
And in doing so become us
Their joy is ours, their pain is ours
Their neuroses and infantile indignation become the burden we grit and bear
Part of the package deal lest we not be party to their dance parties and dazzling states of grace
We are the ones that made it, the infinitely improbable
The monkey that made his name in musical theatre, the swan that survived the storm
Still pretty ugly yet mighty pretty; barefoot, pregnant and full of rage
Full of resolutions and revolutions, depending on your whereabouts amid that yawning gulf between Tofino and Tegucigalpa
And lest we forget, those eight bright Edmonton lights stubbed out in a terrible December flash
Now seared immortal in our tribal memory cache

Here we all are, those who stand, those departed
I love you all - and on this I've only started.

- Pincher Creek, AB, December 31, 2014

10 Sexiest World Leaders of 2015

It's time again for that most hallowed of Brush Talk traditions: the annual Top 10 Sexiest World Leaders contest!

All in all it was a rough year for many of 2014's Top Ten. Of the previous ten, four (Bratušek, Tymoshenko, Yingluck, and Touré) have since been put out to pasture (some democratically, some otherwise), and Haitian President Michel Martelly's days in the presidential palace in Port-au-Prince may be numbered, with ongoing protests and a corruption probe threatening his tenure. Meanwhile, Mexico's guapo president Enrique Peña Nieto has lost a great deal of lustre over his country's declining press freedom, a recent mass kidnapping of students in Iguala and frequent gaffes, while Italy's young premier Matteo Renzi faces an uphill battle against his country's old guard.

This year's list features an almost entirely new lineup from previous years. While Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck is still a hottie, after two years atop the sexy list it was time to move on from the Kingdom of Bhutan. And while Albanian prime minister Edi Rama continues to charm, most recently taking steps to improve his country's long frictious relations with neighbouring Serbia, we decided it was time for fresh blood. Except for Helle Thorning-Schmidt, who is simply too glamourous and wonderful to leave off the list. She makes the Top 10 for the third straight year.

It should perhaps be mentioned that when we're talking about 'sexiness' we're not simply talking physical attractiveness. Nope, we may be shallow here but we're not that shallow. Our contestants are rated on a totally non-objective range of criteria, including looks, fashion sense, personal charm and magnetism, and, wherever possible, competence in their line of work. Also, pains have been taken to assure that all regions of the world are adequately represented, although this has never proved to be a problem in these posts. So without any further ado, here is our Top Ten International Political Hottie list for 2015!

1. Helle Thorning-Schmidt

Source: dagbladdet.no

Why HTS again? Well, in addition to being arguably Europe's most glamourous sitting head of government, Denmark's Gucci-toting, Obama-selfie-snapping PM has a lot to show for her three years in office. Under her leadership, Denmark has emerged as one of Europe's best-performing economies, with an unemployment rate half the eurozone average, the lowest youth unemployment rate in the EU, and a global ranking of fourth in 'ease in doing business' (best in Europe). The country also continues to lead by example in combating climate change, with Denmark now on course to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020.

Of course Give-em Hell Helle hasn't been without her controversies. Obama selfies aside, the centre-left leader has antagonized many on the left in her country by clashing with teachers' unions, cutting corporate taxes, and overseeing the proposed sale of Denmark natural gas consortium DONG Energy shares to Goldman Sachs. Up for reelection in 2015, she currently trails behind Lars Løkke Rasmussen of the centre-right Venstre Party. But with an impressive list of achievements under her designer belt, Gucci Helle still enjoys substantial support - and is certainly not to be discounted.

2. Xavier Bettel

Source: purple-monkey.com

Luxembourg? Really? C'mon, I thought we were sticking with real countries here! Well, aside from having roughly similar sizes and populations, the postage stamp-sized Grand Duchy of Luxembourg also shares a certain va-va-voom factor with the similarly liliputian Kingdom of Bhutan. Instead of a smoking hot Dragon King, Luxembourg has as head of state the dashing Grand Duke Henri, who has presided over this curious vestige of the Holy Roman Empire since the death of his father Jean in 2000. But while the Grand Duke might be a looker, no man has of late been turning heads in the tiny country like its dreamy head of government, Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, who in December 2013 became only the third openly gay world leader in modern history.

So how is Bettel faring thus far as Luxembourg's PM? Hard to tell. Luxembourg remains the second wealthiest country in the world by per-capital GDP (trailing only Qatar), with it and Singapore the only non-oil-based economies in the top five. Moreover, the Luxembourg Tax Avoidance Controversy that dogged his predecessor Jean-Claude Juncker appears to have had little impact on his popularity. And in August of this year the country was treated to the PM's wedding to longtime architect partner Gaultier Destenay. That and, well, how hard can it be to govern a place as small and placid as Luxembourg? Well, giventhe spectacular implosion of Iceland (a country with a population even smaller than the Grand Duchy) in the global financial crisis, that the political fallout that ensued, perhaps it's not as easy as it looks.

3. Joko Widodo

Source: metalsucks.net

Given the fact that Indonesia is a) the world's fourth most populous country; b) the world's third-largest democracy; and c) the world's most populous Muslim country, it's remarkable how little media attention the country's 2014 presidential elections received. While John Oliver famously lambasted the US media for ignoring India's general election (before Prime Minister Narendra Modi became a post-election neoliberal icon), the Indian election was a relative global media circus next to Indonesia's, which went by practically without a murmur. That said, the Southeast Asian nation's 2014 presidential election was a refreshingly placid and uncontroversial affair, which, given the country's relatively recent history of violent coups, ethnic cleansing, communal violence and systematic kleptocracy, is a refreshing sign of a maturing democracy that has come a long way from the end of the ugly Suharto era.

Indonesia's newly minted president Joko Widodo, or 'Jokowi' as he is universally known, shares Modi's rags-to-riches story, but that's where the similarities between the two leaders ends. Whereas Modi's past is clouded by controversy and his present tinged with strident religious nationalism, the colourful former governor of Jakarta appears to be remarkably controversy-free, and his presidential campaign was one centred on pluralism and religious tolerance, earning him the ire of the country's Islamists and the support of just about everybody else in a country long fraught by religious and ethnic conflict. He has also pledged to grow the country's economy by seven per cent a year for the next three years while continuing to overhaul its strained infrastructure.

Aside from his humble background as the son of a village furniture maker, he is probably best known for his abiding love of heavy metal, most notably Metallica, Lamb of God, Slayer and Napalm Death, leading LoG frontman Randy Blythe to dub him the "World's First Heavy Metal President." And at age 53 he looks at most half his age. Guess metal really does keep you young!

4. Cristina Fernández de Kirchner

Source: pri.org

Argentina's Iron Lady and Presidente de la República since 2010, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner has perhaps been something of an oversight in the last two years' top ten lists - if for no other reason that she seems like too obvious a choice. Style-wise she falls into the same category as Denmark's governing glamourpuss, with whom she shares a love of designer labels and haute couture, but Argentina's cougar-in-chief's sexy points stem mainly from her status as a fierce, take-no-shit political warrior with few equals. While Argentina's inflation-ridden economy remains as wobbly as ever, the widow of former president Néstor Kirchner has proven herself to be a fighter equal to her late husband, taking on billionaire US hedge fund managers and British prime ministers with equal aplomb.

Of all of Argentina's leading lady's jousting matches, the most spectacular may have been her KO against the former Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, now known to the world as Pope Francis. While the current pontiff has made admirable, if tentative, steps towards softening the Church of Rome's hardline stance against homosexuality, it was the same Argentine cleric who took to the ring against Señora Kirchner on the issue of same-sex marriage in Argentina. She won, making Argentina the first Latin American country to legalize same-sex marriage, and in doing so just might have helped push the Vatican's sexiest virgin in a more liberal direction. Gracias, Cristina.

5. Michelle Bachelet

Source: paula.cl

Remaining in South America's Cono Sur, 2014 saw the return to power of another one of the continent's leading female political pugilists, Chile's Michelle Bachelet, after four years in opposition. While on the surface, the hippie chick-turned-political refugee-turned-bookish socialist politician might seem like the polar opposite to her Rioplatense counterpart, the Chilean president is no less of a fighter. In her first term as president, Bachelet wasted no time exorcising the country's Pinochet-era ghosts by refusing to grant the late dictator a state funeral following his death in 2006, and three years later opening Santiago's Museum of Memory and Human Rights - a museum dedicated to documenting the horrors of Pinochet's 16-and-a-half year dictatorship.

After four years out to pasture, Señora Bachelet appears to have lost none of her old fire. Her current legislative priorities include legalizing abortion in this longstanding bastion of conservative Catholicism (abortion remains banned under all circumstances in Chile) and educational reforms aimed at narrowing the country's still pronounced socioeconomic divide. At age 63, the guitar-strumming, poetry-loving physician remains one of South America's most eligible bachelorettes. Just be prepared to take a back seat to her three children and her beloved country.

6. Taavi Rõivas

Source: LinkedIn

Estonia may not immediately spring to mind when you think of 'sexy' countries, but the small Baltic state has certainly earned its share of coolness cred since gaining independence from the USSR in 1991. From a melancholy backwater of the Soviet Union, the country has since emerged as an economic and cultural powerhouse, with the highest concentration of tech start-ups anywhere in the world and one of the world's most exciting contemporary music scenes. And while the country took a severe beating during the the global financial crisis of 2008-2009, Estonia's healthy business climate, strong ties to Scandinavia, and growing tourism industry helped make its recession far less painful than many of its fellow ex-Eastern Bloc countries.

If geek-chic has become Estonia's new modus vivendi, the country definitely has the right leadership for the job. In the largely ceremonial role of president Estonia has a bow-tied Bill Nye lookalike named Toomas Hendrik Ilves, a social media-obsessed tech maven who famously got into a Twitter spat with economist Paul Krugman over Estonia's 2008 austerity program. Meanwhile, this year's parliamentary election brought to power the baby-faced Taavi Rõivas, who at age 35 is currently the EU's youngest head of government. Combining Justin Timberlake's hair, Leo DiCaprio's jawline, and an easy fluency in four languages, Rõivas might just be the dishiest figure on the EU scene. But don't get your hopes up - his marriage to local pop princess Luisa Värk is one the the best-known things about him.

7. Portia Simpson Miller

Source: pri.org

When it comes to Gross National Sexy, the land of rum, reggae and rastafarianism has it made. Jamaica may have its problems, but lack of sex appeal has never been among them. From the seductive Irish-influenced lilt of Jamaican English to the island's bad-ass cuisine and its irresistible musical smorgasbord of reggae, ska, dancehall, rocksteady etc., Jamaica oozes sex appeal like few other places. Sadly, however, the island's politics have been decidedly less sexy over the course of the nation's young history, as its diverse economy has long been hampered by corruption and fiscal mismanagement to such an extent that a 2011 revealed that 60 per cent of Jamaicans would, if put to a vote, opt to return to direct British rule. Such sentiments are further compounded by the island's stubbornly high rate of violent crime, with poverty and corruption continuing to fuel the country's notorious gang problem.

Jamaica's current prime minister Portia Simpson Miller represents a significant departure from the island's previous leaders. As the country's first female head of government, Sista P, as she is commonly known, has shown a willingness to swim against the current when dealing with her country's warts. Most notably she has been the first Jamaican leader to publicly advocate on behalf of LGBTQ rights, a thorny issue in one of the world's most notoriously homophobic societies. While her performance on this front has been mixed in recent years, her administration has overseen a gradual opening of dialogue with gay rights groups and reforms aimed at curbing homophobic violence. And at age 69 she still looks glamourous, which helps when you're blowing kisses at LGBTQ rights protesters in New York City.

8. Joseph Kabila

Source: gabonlibre.com

Unless you're a wannabe mercenary with a serious danger fetish, the Democratic Republic of Congo is about the furthest thing from a sexy tourist destination one could possibly think of. The Central African country formerly known as Zaïre and previously known as the Belgian Congo has for most of its post-independence history been the sum of every negative cliché about the continent, from the cartoonish kleptocracy of dictator Mobutu Sésé Seko to the horrors of the country's two post-Mobutu civil wars, which together resulted in as many as 5.4 million deaths - more than any armed conflict since World War II. Even now, over ten years after the end of the Second Congo War, the eastern regions of Kivu and Ituri remain humanitarian disasters, where rape continues to be employed as a weapon of war with terrifying regularity. Indeed, using the word sexy in the same sentence as the DRC might strike some as inherently in bad taste.

That said, there once was a time when the nation's capital Kinshasa (formerly Léopoldville) was a hip and happening metropolis known affectionately as 'Kin la Belle' (Kin the Beautiful), which teemed with jazz joints and cafés, even as Mobotu and famously hosted Foreman and Ali for their legendary 1974 'Rumble in the Jungle' bout. And while much of the country remains a humanitarian nightmare, there are signs that life in the capital and other more peaceful regions is returning to normal - such as an emerging jazz festival in Kinshasa. As for sexy leadership, former guerrilla fighter-turn-president Joseph Kabila is certainly the handsomest head of state the country has had since the assassination of its dapper founding president Patrice Lumumba. While Kabila's 2012 reelection was marred by irregularities, he's been a saint compared to his predecessors - and at the very least is easy on the eyes.

9. Atifete Jahjaga / Tatiana Turanskaya

Sources: gazetadita.al / iefimerida.gr

In the ninth spot we have a split decision between two leaders whose countries fall into the category known to political scientists as 'places that don't exist'. The post-Cold War disintegration of the Soviet Union and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia left in its wake a bizarre assortment of self-declared nation states ranging in size from Kazakhstan (about four times the size of Texas) to places small enough to defend with a single large man with a Kalashnikov and a pack of rottweilers. It is into this latter category that fall the republics of Kosovo and Transnistria, two 'countries' that remain unrecognized by either much or nearly all of the world. On this front, Kosovo is on slightly more secure ground. Nearly nine years after its declaration of independence in 2008, it enjoys full diplomatic recognition from most developed western countries, including most of Europe. Transnistria, on the other hand, only enjoys recognition from fellow unrecognized breakaway republics Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh and South Ossetia, although Russia, which maintains a troop presence in the region, continues to accord it 'special status' - whatever that means.

Transnistria and Kosovo also share the distinction of being led by two of the youngest female political leaders around. In 2013, the parliament of Moldova's breakaway eastern sliver selected as its prime minister the 40-year-old Tatiana Turanskaya, a former city administrator and mother of two, which is about all we could find out about her. (Concrete English-language information on the secretive Transnistrian Republic seems to be hard to come by.) More, however, is known about her Kosovar counterpart Major General Atifete Jahjaga, the country's former Deputy Director of Police who in 2011 became the region's youngest and first female head of state at age 35. While her ambition to move Kosovo towards EU membership might seem a long way off, she looks to have at least secured her country's place within the International Olympic Committee. Which is more than can be said for Transnistria, whose athletes have no option but to compete under the Moldovan flag.

Jahjaga and Turanskaya are both lookers - and therefore both make the list, but for all intents and purposes Jahjaga's worldly charisma and tough cop image puts her on top in the beautiful-women-running-tiny-states-struggling-for recognition category. Turanskaya appears to be more of Eastern European Danielle Smith than anything - possibly ready to cross the floor to Russia or Moldova at any moment.

10. Park Geun-hye

Source: New York Times

Of all the innumerable US-backed dictators of the late-twentieth century, few cut as jaunty a figure as South Korean strongman Park Chung-hee, who dominated his country's political scene from 1961 until his assassination in 1979. A former Imperial Japanese military officer during the colonial era who seized power in a 1961 coup, General Park is simultaneously loathed by modern-day Koreans for constructing a police responsible for a laundry list of human rights violations in the 1970s and 1980s (including the infamous Gwangju Massacre of 1980), and revered for his instrumental role in the country's spectacular economic ascendancy from the 1960s onward. Koreans' conflicted relationship with their former dictator has been thrown into sharp focus in recent years with the dramatic ascension of his daughter, Park Geun-hye, to the office he once held, making her the first female leader of any of East Asia's 'tiger' economies.

A little-known fact about South Korea's sitting president is that in 1974, as a 22-year-old university student in France, she suddenly found herself in the official role of First Lady following the death of her mother in a botched assassination attempt on the president - a direct link to the country's most autocratic period that makes many Koreans uncomfortable. But while her administration took a beating in the aftermath of the Sewol ferry disaster (although her decisive response to the disaster earned her many plaudits) and more recently has been shaken by an influence-peddling scandal within her Saenuri Party, she remains East Asia's most powerful woman according to Forbes Magazine, and her popular nickname 'Queen of Elections' if nothing else confirms her unquestionable commitment to the democratic principles her father once usurped.

While 'sexy' might not be the right adjective for the stern, buttoned-down mother of the nation, she nonetheless manages to blend Margaret Thatcher's charisma and resolve with the maternal streak of Michelle Bachelet. She remains unmarried, alluding in the past to being 'married to South Korea'. It's therefore doubtful that Korea's Iron Lady has a profile on Plenty of Fish, or whatever the Korean equivalent to that is. But with her maximum term in office to expire in 2018, one never knows for sure.

Hey Melanie! (In Loving Memory of an Old Friend)

Hey Melanie

Yeah you

You with the fearless eyes and solid gold smile

You are not forgotten

Not for an instant

Your words, etched against time in high school yearbooks

Imploring me to live life more fully

Words to live by, words that depth-charge and catapult me now more than ever

Look at me now, Mel!

Look at all of us inlet kids

Scattered like summer driftwood

But still singingly alive

Just like that grin of yours

Never to fade away.

Hey Melanie

You who was always the life of that perpetual party

Forever the summer of '93

Can't you hear us?

We're right behind you, cuz us inlet kids never quit

Can't you hear the house band?

They're not half bad, I think

With Tyler on drums and Brian D on guitar

That's me on the microphone

And that song? That's the one your electric spirit

And that note you passed me in grade 9 French class inspired

Riotous times ensue

With you at the centre, egging us on

Hey Melanie

Yeah you, soul sister from the straits

Central Saanich will never be the same

Without your raven hair, raucous laugh and roiling spirit

Durrance Lake is still the place to be in summer

'Cept the trees cinched in an inch or two

With news of your departure

An endless shout still echoes through the rainforest

And amid the rocks and stones of Island View

The beauty became you, and you it

Distinctions now melted away.

Hey Melanie

Don't you know that smile of yours

Still ignites the night sky

Over the island canvas of my childhood

Paths long diverged but never forgotten

They say you can never go back home

But us Brentwood babies never truly leave

That place where summer nights are long

But memories linger longer still

We'll see you again when all us inlet kids
join you on the beachhead of the day after
fire alight, spitting at the moon, rainclouds running scared
with you in the middle, forever keepin' in real

Hey Melanie
Don't you know on the island there are no goodbyes
Only catch-you-laters
But until then our hearts will cry out for your sassy smile
All our thoughts and candlelit pujas cast loose upon the ocean
For you to catch on the other shore
Eternity begins tomorrow - not that long to wait really
But until then, stay warm and be loved

And don't let go

Cuz we sure as hell won't