I shall be released. Reporting in after the show in Victoria. Great fun to release the hounds once again. Played a bit thrashy at times but the more loose electric trio format is so much fun. There is so much room for the voice even when you’re filling up space with guitar noise every once in awhile. The Brisk Brothers were steady and powerful as always. The universally obvious was obvious. The monitors are usually going to suck in a little club. Screwed up “Someone Who’s Cool” again. My life is irony. Nice to meet a few people I hadn’t met before (Brian Fukshima the cartoonist...do a search for his site . . .he’s good) and see a few I hadn’t seen for a long time. Thanks to Leanne Dunic for putting on the show. The real treat was getting to see Tom Hooper play. I’m listening to his CD right now and its really good. I encourage all you who love his silky voice and classic “pop” songsmanship to buy the CD “Tom Hooper: The Unexplored Cosmos, Bullseye Records BLR-CD-4058 www.tomhooper.ca. It was a good hang after the show. Nathan with the Bedbugs album cover tattoo came by. I think he thinks I think its crazy that he has this giant stag beetle on his leg but I think that artwork is quite good and the beetle can symbolize a whole lot more than just our album. Here’s the set list. Nothing really radically different. I don’t think anybody taped the show but I think there were a few cameras.

Giddy Up
Slow Motion
Take a Hit
What Lack of Love has Done
Satisfied
Write it In Lightning
Old Mistakes
Famous Grave
Always Breaking Heart
Make You Mad
After Walking In Space
Someone Who’s Cool
Sons & Daughters

Did “...Lack of Love” as a full electric number and all the Odds tunes as well. Nice power in that format. Made me feel like the old Craig. Out of tune, sloppy and a little louder. Used “Trevor” (my red Gibson ES-135 of old) for the whole gig save for “Famous Grave” and “Always Breaking Heart”. I’ve bashed that guitar around for so long that its really become one of those things that only I can relate to. Only I can ride that horse the right way. Like a shoe fetishist I think about it today and how much I love playing it. My main squeeze Fender Esquire is jealously molting in the studio . . . waiting quietly for me to grow tired of my fling with the old flame. You say I invent these love triangles with my guitars to spice things up. I say, “shhhh I hear my wah pedal talking trash in the other room”.
posted by Craig Northey at 2:19 PM

Putting out an A.P.B. That’s what you have to do in this age where so many communication channels are open. It never matters how much you send out. It only matters how much someone on the other end wants to hear. The APB can be done in any sequence based on the tone you want to set.
A little over ten years ago people usually had a single telephone in their homes. If you wanted to get hold of them you called it. If they didn’t answer you might have left a message. Answering machines were a relatively new thing. People got all excited about composing their outgoing messages. How passé’. You could leave a message with someone else in the home and they would write it down on a piece of paper? Now you must put out the APB over at least three but as many as six channels. Your options are e-mail, the lowly fax, internet pager, pager, cellular phone, home line, and business line. All of these options provide the receiver with any number of cloaking devices. Answering machines, voice mail, and believable assistants who provide alibis. Short of serving someone papers through the sheriff's office you must spend the time to make three calls and type out two messages via the computer to even raise the eyebrow of some bunker dwellers. The bunker dwellers set the tone for communication with all others. People have become so frustrated that they start their APB in the most aggressive spot. ALWAYS THE CELLPHONE FIRST. If you want to come in low and slow you start with a gentle e-mail or a pleasant message on the business line. Having a cell on you makes others see it the possibility of instant connection. That possibility is, indeed, faint. Not only can they be turned off and screened . . .they don’t work worth a load of snot in a hanky. Since I got mine I feel like I’m playing army with my friends. “Maybe the two way radio will work Jim. When we get out in the open past the firing line lets see if we can get a connection.” “Sarge I have a connection to base camp they say the enemy is breathing down our . . .oh shit . . . I’ve lost them”.
My little crystal two way radio decides to work and cut people off seemingly at random. This can only be correlated with the importance of the call. If I have APB’d someone for days (and they are finally getting back to me about something important) they will call the cell. I will hear them say their name in that broken digital rasp. I will shout down the ridiculous little toy phone, “can you hear me?”. They will say, “_es I _an _ere _ou”. Then it just goes as silent as a stone. At that point you feel even more idiotic holding that little rectangular stone to your cheek. Its fun to throw stones into water. I had a pager. I thought that was a great idea. I might go back. I heard someone say they hated that extra step of calling and waiting or receiving then calling. I had it for family and business emergencies and it didn’t work outside my home area. Sweet relief.
I think people base the urgency of the incoming communication on the level of APB. A “red level APB” is where all machines are full of the same message with growing degrees of impatience in the tone. The e-mail is nice. The business line is straightforward. The home line is casual yet pressing. The cell phone is urgent. The fax is large swear words written in Sharpie. A “green level” APB is pleasant on all channels with identical messages only modified by at least two apologies for leaving the same message again. The “green level” is doubled up with a “red level” eventually. The sequence of calls is important to the classification as well. Five cell phone messages with nothing on the other lines can speak volumes about the personality profile of the caller. Some just try two e-mails in a row and don’t use the phone. These may be cries for help rather than APBs.
Here I must claim guilt. I can be hard to get to sometimes. With a full slate of family and music responsibilities I can fall back into the bunker every once in awhile. Travel compounds the simple “busy” factors and then I can really frustrate people. I can’t find any space to create without staying up later than everyone else and then getting up with them in the morning. Sooner or later I skid to a stop using my face for brakes. Sometimes I’ll try to get in some daytime work and that means maybe getting two “green level” APBs and one “red”. I’m learning to live with it. Its the golden rule.
posted by Craig Northey at 10:11 AM

Altitude training. I’ve had of some of my best ideas at high altitude and in isolation. Brain function should be impaired in this situation? All my cracker jack prize psychological theories are substantiated by such findings. Deprive the body of its essentials and you will reach a higher state of function for a short time. Out of desperation your systems dig to deeper places to get what they need and in those places you’ll find some more exotic ideas. After that you are on your own. You crash. The little Jacques Cousteaus in your molecules start to dive into the Mariannas Trench of your body. Down there lurk phosphorescent creatures never before discovered. They have hidden down there in the darkness adapting themselves to the part of your physical system that is unexplored. When the sturdy horses of your body’s big systems turn to the wagon, lower their brows, snort and lie down in the road you must hop down and walk across the heat warped dust bowl alone. Inside you call all creatures from the inner depths. Rise to the surface with your alien shaped exoskeletons and iodine rich fast twitch fibres. Swim the wrong way down the vascular tubes and shake out the last stubborn nutrients clinging to the walls. The buzz you get from these stubborn and well cured nutrients is usually cathartic. Some hallucinate. They see the oasis that lies ahead. The hallucinated oasis provides a reason to move forward. First time aerobics class participants become aware how many muscles and tendons lie fallow for years. This is different. This goes deeper. Remember though . . .I am not a doctor.
Some turn to psychedelic drugs to reach this state. It seems easier and has been known to yield a mailbag full of indecipherable yet colourful “truths”. The clear and pure aphorisms can more easily be obtained through directly testing the bodies limits. Both can be bad for you. The physical stresses of drug use seem to hinder ones ability to do something good with the discoveries made on the voyage. There is an amotivational syndrome and a clothy and murky hangover. You get your wires crossed after a spell. You might forget what you “learned” an hour before and have no desire to remember it anyway. You need pure physical abuse like just plain staying up late, running too far, climbing too high, staying too long in the sun, staying too long in the cold and wet, or starving and dehydrating yourself. Minor chemical accelerants can be of help. Caffeine (a favourite), Sinutab, Advil, and MSG are pretty good examples. If one is living purely in the here and now then mushrooms and mescaline might be the way to go. Right at the time you feel you’ve “figured it all out”. If you come back and still think so then you are going to ride the pine in most social circles because too much spouting about your new theories will relegate you to the casualty category. By about 1975 people had stopped seeing any drug induced revelations as having credibility. If you say you got there through insomnia, isolation, excertion or starvation then you stand a better chance. That’s how buddha did it. Scientists work overtime and run their fingers into their wild gray manes while their cigarette smoke curls up to the arc lamps through the maze of glass tubes that are rendering and boiling new elements. Fast food wrappers litter the lab and they smell of funk and butane. To most people this paints a picture of pending legitimate discovery. This is more acceptable than the “naked in the desert and howling at the moon while painted to resemble the tin man from Wizard of Oz” variety of discovery. Ironically the survivors of Haight Ashbury now look almost exactly like these scientists. Under the lab coats they even dress the same. Some of the scientists ARE from the same background.
Currently I am about 3500 feet above sea level, tired and caffeinated. I have written myself in a circle and am contemplating a trip to the Black Rock desert for next week’s Burning Man. I have no credibility. I am not a doctor. A decent circular thinker.
posted by Craig Northey at 11:49 PM

Haircuts. How many haircuts have I had in my life? How many times have I shaved? How many times does one person wash a car? Some of these things come more easily to mind than others. I could probably count the number of hairstyle modifications I’ve been through (more than most) if I search back but the number of actual haircuts would be tougher. I think its about every four months. That’s how I do it. I cut it and let it go til its either freaking me out or is boring to look at. Its getting that way with shaving too. Its getting that way with just about everything. Start it, let it go and then screw it all up once it becomes something. . .or . . .start it, watch it and eventually grow tired of it. So many rash decisions are precipitated purely by boredom or discomfort. Boredom and alcohol are a pretty volatile combo. Small town crime sprees, misspelled tattoos, computer viruses and crazy new dances. The 80’s may have been the best historical example.
I have never really settled on a haircut. Maybe I’ve never been able to control my boredom reaction cycle in the interests of proper marketing. We have all learned that change is a brander’s nightmare. If I could just stick to one thing then it would be easier to sell all those buttons with my face on them. Every time I change it I help subvert anybody’s ability to burn my image into their memory banks. I have never entered the comfort zone that would allow me to stay in one hairy place. Some people stay with the haircut they had in high school. It reminds them of a time when everything was right and exciting for them. Maybe they actually were popular with girls at the time. I didn’t enjoy the social aspects of my teenage years enough to fall comfortably into a nice Port Moody mullet or stay with my pre-grunge unilength look. I have revisited that latter one a couple of times but never stayed too long. I feel it peaked with my “Little Mermaid” look from 1993 to 1994. My “shag” came and went a number of times. The “tennis ball” look has been pretty solid for me over the last few years. I predict “the Bob” cut of the early 90’s to be the next haircut up for popular ridicule. As a youngster I was a proponent of the brush cut far beyond its day in the sun. I liked the feel of it and I liked rubbing that stick of wax on my head. If you finished high school in the 80’s then chances are good you should be moving on to a different haircut by now.
By yesterday my hair had reached its high school grad photo length. It was three different bleached out and frazzled shades and I hadn’t shaved for a few days. I have also taken to wearing my slippers . . .all the time . . .everywhere. If the image grows to musky then I will add that I do keep myself clean. My motivation for today’s move back to the traditional “messy short” Craig was based mostly on discomfort rather than boredom. Its hot out. This, I felt, was a valid reason to hack it off. I am inadvertently moving into the “I have definitely grown tired of any ideas concerning imaging” look. This could be construed as having something to do with imaging. I assure you it is laziness in grooming and my subsequent reaction to my laziness that has been the essence of any style I convey. Style has nothing whatsoever to do with fashion but I adopt elements of the current fashion if I find them conveniently available on a rack that is within my grasp and close to the door of the mall I wish to get out of as soon as humanly possible. Boredom does not allow me to go to the same place and buy the same thing over and over. My loathing of shopping helps me make snap decisions in new situations. Some decisions I have regretted. Other decisions I just wish were never documented on film but I don’t regret them too much. Haven’t got used to this haircut yet.
posted by Craig Northey at 11:24 PM

Cell phone surrender. I just signed on to the devil’s walkie talkie. So convenient, so expensive, so intrusive. In an effort to actually lower my telephone bills I have taken on this microwave ball & chain. I guess I should have seen it coming when I wore the pager for a year. Pot leads to heroin so it naturally follows. Soon we will all walk around talking to ourselves. We will be so wired that eye contact will be unnecessary. I was in a line-up at Starbucks in LA awhile ago . . .does that paint a picture without me saying anything about the scenario? All Starbucks have the same decor and aroma. Its a little more euro earthy but its still a franchise. The staff rooms are probably identical to a Burger King or Wendy’s. You can imagine the sunshine streaming in on the teal and umber faux wood and brushed stainless steel merchandise wall. You can smell the over roasted beans and hear the same soul numbers cast off from “the Commitments” soundtrack. Everyone was chatting but it became evident that none of them were talking to each other. Single occupants of tables for two. All on cell phones to someone across town, next door or overseas. All the people in front of me in line were also on phones. The confusion at the order counter was fascinating. The person would pull their chin up away from the phone, cover the mouthpiece with the opposite hand and whisper “grande non-fat latte”. The barrista (that’s what they call them) would say, “pardon me”. The customer would be back on the call and say something to the other person on the line like, “no no no that’s not what I said”. The barrista would say, “I’m sorry, you don’t want a grande non-fat latte”? The customer would once again cover the mouthpiece and say, “yes yes I want it” and go back to his call. The barrista would say, “was it a non-fat latte?”. The customer would be back on the phone and would be overheard saying, “there are several ways to look at this”. The barrista would say, “its not that complex. What do you want?”. On and on in a Buck Rogers meets Abbott & Costello sketch. The process repeated itself a couple of times. When I got to the counter I smiled at her and said, “bloody cell phones”. She seemed baffled and said, “sorry?”.
posted by Craig Northey at 1:03 PM

Look at my hands. They’re typing in such an ungainly fashion. My typing resembles my guitar playing. I’ve chosen these vehicles for the majority of my creating and they still seem so foreign to me. I certainly am no “one take wonder” on the guitar and its amazing if I can get one word right without a typo. One very close friend of mine, if present at a show, always tells me not to look at my hands when I’m playing. He usually adds, “you look like you’re the type of guy who’s going to fuck up tonight”. I know he’s a zen master but without an element of truth these statements can’t do the trick. If someone was watching me type they’d say, “don’t look at your hands”. I try to look up at the screen sometimes and not at my hands and I’m always surprised what happens. I’ll give you an example:

This is me when I type with eyes flitting up ans down from the screen.

You’ll notice the typo on “and”. The “s” is close to the “d” so this is understandable. Its still pathetic since I was looking at the time.

Thiw ia me when O don’r look ar my finhrts.

What I meant to type was, “This is me when I don’t look at my fingers”

I’m actually amazed I got that close. This is how I play guitar. I jam all the feeling in and pray that my mistakes will somehow help me find new ground. I’ve had a lot of luck in the lazy man’s learning. Its stunning to shoot the arrow in the dark and hit a bulls eye but its even more amazing to get seven out of ten on the damn target. Now I can play fine without looking at my hands. We used to practice in the pitch black with the Odds sometimes. It really does change what you hear. Its more about the moments when I let the music take me away and I realize I’m lost in some strange cul de sac and all the other players are nowhere in sight. Its like driving full speed off that new off ramp they haven’t finished building. You “used” to know that stretch of road pretty well and now the map has changed. You should have been paying attention to the big orange signs. Now you are in “Jazzworld”. In Jazzworld everyone knows what they are doing and everyone has memorized the map. The beauty in their playing is how they can do a bit of offroading to try and throw or impress their passengers and co-pilots and then quickly swerve back on course. Everyone who has memorized the map knows when you’re holding a phony passport in Jazzworld. There are plenty of fabulous “in jokes” in Jazzworld. If you’ve learned your instrument by ear and understand the basics of theory you can sometimes get back on the on-ramp ( to the places you know) by pure instinct and animal cunning. Sometimes it just feels like one way has to be the right way to go and it ends up working. Sometimes you are looking at your hands to avoid looking at anyone else.
posted by Craig Northey at 11:40 PM

Then all of a sudden I felt good about things. I’ve been a little lower than usual lately. My regrouping resources have been overtaxed and the stray dark thoughts have oozed their way through little holes and loomed black and strange over all potentially positive things on my mind. They’re sticky and heavy and far too serious for their own good. Something had to be done so this morning I climbed the Grouse Grind (a really steep hike up my neighbourhood mountain for about 2500 feet) with a professional athlete friend who kicked my sorry ass into perspective. The cleansing effect of the endorphin overdose was compounded with two quick beer before noon in a thinner atmosphere and overlooking a breathtaking vista. That’s my kind of therapy. I suppose his absolute trouncing of my physical prowess could have lowered my self esteem and plunged me further into my cave but . . .he gets paid to smash people in such a way so I was, more or less, just in awe of his professional dedication to the cause. My fondness for borderline legal remedies made me drink a pot of coffee as soon as he dropped me off at home. I’ve since had a pot of tea and some more beer . Its hardly bennies to downers to crystal meth to heroin but I’ve stuck a flag in my twenties and claimed them proudly for the nation of higher learning. I can work the same routine on a micro level and appreciate it even more. Besides . . .I’ll save that action for heart surgeons, stock brokers and industrial rockers. Sewed the day shut with a run through some tunes with Pat Steward and my youngest son. If every generation is a reaction to the last I don’t know what he’s reacting to. He seems headed for the same chain link fence at the end of the same alley with the same dogs nipping at his heels. I can only hope the endorphins keep his spirits up.
posted by Craig Northey at 10:29 PM

A bomb hit it. That’s what my house looks like. I just pretend we’re renovating. Can’t keep up. Its a Rockford Files episode where Angel says, “oh my God Jim what have they done to your place!” The goons from the bad guy syndicate were by to look for some secret files. I guess I am an honourary private dick. Messes are creative manifestations but they come with a catch 22. You can’t think when it gets too messy because you’re thinking about how you’re ever going to clean it up. You get distracted by the stray magazine or computer cable. The dishes beckon you to get them back to eating condition. You can’t find anything you desperately need. My keys. Where the hell are my keys? I’m late. Good luck tardy boy. How did we get all this stuff? How did it fit in here? Clowns emerge from the Volkswagen Beetle. Ten rabbits from one hat. Its magic. How did the bomb go off without bringing down the walls?
posted by Craig Northey at 3:10 PM

Repeat after me. Repeat after first application. Finished a shower and was drying off when I realized my hands were not really my own at the time. They were on some sort of repeat cycle. First rub head with towel. Right hand moves up under towel and pull down across top of left arm. Left hand does the same as right over left arm. Hands repeat outward motion with an upward swing to dry forearms. As my hands worked the towel I moved to an out of body spot. I noticed that each motion was involuntary and stealthily efficient. At some point I had learned how to dry myself and eventually the process was memorized by my muscles and my brain was free to move elsewhere. I probably do this in exactly the same way (with minor variations for the new things I find over the years) each time. I thought of the elaborate ritual of the hockey team whacking the goalies pads in the exact same order and in all the obscure places in order to avoid bad luck. Goalies taps left post and then right. Skates into left corner. Looks at the clock. Never different. Drying yourself after a shower is perhaps more complex. It struck me that I had probably started my day this way and that the idea that came to me for the song of the had come during the drydown. In all these muscle memorized periods I was free to travel off to a more valuable space. Sure “be here now” is a potent and valuable instruction but I think this may be the way most people buy creative time for themselves. “Be elsewhere now”. This is perhaps the bodies way of giving us back our creative space as the day gets filled with menial tasks and necessities. Art, science and human civilization have flourished on trips to the bathroom, the repeated hammering of nails, and putting on socks. I have these fears that driving a car to the same spot each day can take commuters into the same treading of gray matter. Since I am not currently a commuter I think it best to avoid the road when others commute. I’ve reached my destination and not known how. I knew I drove there but I couldn’t exactly remember every detail. I was probably thinking so hard about ways to quit my job and move onto other things that I let my sense memory take over the driving. Its amazing what’s in that tank. The sense memory tank contains so many things you do that you don’t know you do. In it lies your nervous twitches and compulsive leanings. I will put the phone in the fridge sometimes. Friends have noticed that I will hand them things for no reason. I will be holding a pen, a kitten, a clock, or the shoe I am about to put on. As I converse with them I will casually put it in their hands. No reason. There are aspects of the sense memory system that may, in my case, be “overdeveloped” . Perhaps mom cooked in too many aluminum pots. When I see my kids performing the same involuntary actions as my own I realize that some motions have survived for generations. Families handing different facial ticks, ungainly running techniques and erotic flares on to their next of kin. I pray that my kids do not establish such an extensive repertoire as my own but that they use their down time wisely. I will not let them drive. . . I promise . . . . now hit the showers.
posted by Craig Northey at 12:16 AM

I had a lazy idea. Steal someone else's journal entry for today and just change the names to include my mom and some historical figures. I went to Blogger.com and picked the first one. I changed a few things but mostly its intact. I don't know who they are or where they live but I bet they love their mom enough to party with her too.

friday [08/09/02]: Mom picked me up around 2ish and we headed back to her house cuz mr. sun was bein a lil too generous with them ultra-violet rays. so, we chilled a bit with Mario van Peebles and the Antichrist etc, and his cousins (oh, man...they're so cute!!! they make me miss my cousins) and looked up the movie times for Signs. so, yeah...we were off to Paseo to catch the 3:20 showing. it was pretty early for a movie, but it's okae cuz it was still fun. but, yeah. we got the crap scared out of us in some parts. it's not a movie thas HIGHLY recommended on the Mom-Craig scale, but it's...umm...cool. so after the movie, we kinda had rumbly-tumblies so we went to in-n-out and by some act of God, mom convinced me to chow on a 4x4 with her. oh, man...it was horrible. i tried to take the biggest bite i could, and it ended up bein a bitch bite in comparison to the burger. it was...interesting. that was my only meal that day, but i was so full. we made a bit of a bet before we ate and since i didn't finish the 4x4, it kinda up'd the anties. so, we'll juss see how it all ends when she gets back. but, yeah, we had a bout and or 2 to kill so we chilled at the gal for the first time all summer and we ran into my buddy Mussolini (hi, cutieface!). yeah, he's a buddy. then, we were off to Charles Lindberg's house to witness his lil drunken fiesta. we didn't get to stay long, though cuz mom had to get home early and pack. and since i wanted to talk to her in person for the last time before she left, i asked her to take me home. it was so sad. i cried the 2nd week of summer cuz she was leaving for a week and i cried the 2nd to the last week of summer cuz she was leaving for a week again. *sigh* i already missed her when i got outta the car =*( but minus the tearful goodbye, that was the best date/day we've had in a while. i'm so happy we had a fun day before she left.
posted by Craig Northey at 11:51 PM

Stats from the Odyssey in an Odyssey

65 days travel
All the provinces...no territories. From Vancouver to Cape Spear NF
Ten of the US states
Just shy of 27,000 kilometres
only one night sleeping in the car

Wildlife Spotted (some margin of error)

Bison 104 Woodpecker 1
Black Bear 10 Coyote 3
Deer 58 Moose 25
Crane 2 Rabbit 14
Wolf 1 Antelope 51
Mountain Goats 2 Mink 1
Gopher (unlimited) Turtle 1
Ground Squirrels (too many) Beaver 10
Prairie Dogs 8 Jackrabbit 1
Bog Horn Sheep 33 Frog 3
Elk 228 Duck Families 3
Weasel 1 Whales 3 (we think)
Fox 4 Ground Hog 2
Pheasant 2 Raccoon 2
Blue Heron ( a lot ) Toad 2
Bald Eagle 1 Golden Eagle 2

Roadkill / Dead

Coyote 4 Weasel 1
Fox 8 Possum 18
Raccoon 39 Rabbit 12
Deer 11 Moose 1
Badger 1 Catfish 7
Porcupine 6 Beaver 2
Snake 6 Ground Hog 10
Skunk 19 Gopher 12 (then stopped counting)
chipmunk 1* Antelope 1
Mouse 1*


note: didn’t bother counting squirrels, anything unidentifiable...too gory... at speed was left off the tally (the total for these spottings would be massive), * denotes ones that were hit by our car)








posted by Craig Northey at 11:01 PM

My host on the web decided to take some sort of summer vacation without telling me and the site was down for a few days. Apologies. I will be back on the program in a few hours. We have liftoff.
posted by Craig Northey at 8:28 PM

Feed a cold starve a fever. Its a struggle just to maintain concentration when whole sections of your brain are swimming in snot. Feed it. Starve it. Whatever. You just want to lie down. Its the one time that beer doesn’t make it all better. You’re off balance with ears filled with fluid and you can’t see because your eyes water when you move your head too quickly. Perfect training to be a frogman. I used to feel these things coming on and take evasive action. I think I tend to wave the white flag a little earlier now. You can at least blow your nose on the white flag. My nose is started to be rubbed raw from honking. A second ago a single clear teardrop hit my lap. I think it was from my nose. I am losing my ability to sense the pooling of fluid. Calling all inventors. I need a clear plastic cup that can be suspended from my nose in my private moments. I would refrain from using tissues at this time in order to slow the reddening and stinging effect of paper on flesh. A sensor would beep when the cup was full and I could replace it with an empty one.
I saw a bunch of guys in their hot rods in the lineup for the Horseshoe Bay ferry today. Some of them had vintage tent trailers in tow. I’d noted this ultra chic trend in “vintage era camping” whilst on our cross continental journey. It harkens back to a time when the forests were in better shape and the wilderness was still there to be abused and exploited without guilt. I read some accounts of the boom in car camping during the 50’s and 60’s while out there doing it myself. It seems a great toll was exacted on the flora and fauna causing many campsites in national parks to be closed. These areas are slowly returning to their former glory. Most of the hot rod owners are, at least, in their fifties save for the odd late 80’s rockabilly stalwart that has stayed true to the revival. I can completely identify with their fetishism. The early eras of heavy consumerism were much more innocent and the design elements and materials were just so much more solid. You can’t argue with asbestos, nitro cellulose lacquer, bakelite and mother of toilet seat. Sure some of the manufacturing processes cause cancer but you have to admit things looked better. Plastic can’t compete. When those hot rods are sitting in a queue with 10 Dodge Neons and 30 mini vans with Thule boxes its easy to tell who has put more passionate thought into their vacation. Lets hope they don’t take the whole lifestyle back to the campsites with them though. I seem to remember a lot more beer caps and broken glass to cleanup. Put an oil pan under that thing too. Maybe they can use the drip cups I’m having designed for my nose. Feed a bucket-T. Starve a street rod.
posted by Craig Northey at 1:01 AM

Back into the thing that got me here. Stay up late. Get up early. Do it until you can’t. I need a haircut, a shave, and a reason to believe in things that are not important. If my priorities are finally straight then I’m fucked. I want to spend long days talking to my gal and tossing frisbees to a dog that is being chased by my kids. The evenings would be much the same only no frisbee. When the kids fell asleep . . . well . . .whatever you can think of. I would also like to be able to take this little world around the globe. Will anybody pay me to do that? Since I don’t have the dog I could perhaps find a hardworking rich person who has one I could help. I would provide a “dog socializing service” that would integrate the client’s dog into a setting of domestic bliss if . . say . . the client were having some troubles at home. Temporary foster care. The client can destroy his/her relationship though careerism and the money they make can go to me. If nobody is having a good time then I might as well be the pinch hitter. While I work this all out I guess I’ll have to go back to the insomnia cycle and do a few spins around the block.
posted by Craig Northey at 12:52 AM

Just read the one from yesterday. I swear I'm not a pothead. Speaking of potheads . . . the show at the Little River Rockfest in Minnedosa Manitoba was fun. The crowd was "classic". What's a four day "classic" event like that without dust, sunburn, boozy hooting, dope huffing, motorcycles, and hooter flashing. One woman in the front row felt that her breasts were very important to us. Perhaps she was hard of hearing as a result of too many rockfests. A friend may have suggested she get them examined regularly by a physician and instead she heard "musician". I have no advice for her except to say that not wearing earplugs at these events isn't going to help. Some park ranger is going to get quite a show when she thinks she hears, "get an examination by a fine ecologist". I can at least tell her that when she reaches up to pull her bikini top to the side she spills some of her beer. This is bad form. She should at least put one of the beers down in order to free up a hand more readily. When she gets the hearing aid she's going to save on booze too. She won't feel the need to get all whipped up before she goes to see the doctor because there won't be the intimidation of potential public humiliation in front of thousands of people. The doctor will probably say, "your breasts are fine but I think you need to consider a good sunscreen."

Not much coming up on the live front now. August 30th at Steamers in Victoria. I'll be solo.
posted by Craig Northey at 12:24 AM

Sense of space. On an airplane to Winnipeg right now. Will enlightenment happen here? What does context do to initiate awareness. I can try to tune into this space but it will be shallower water than some other situations. I suppose that beyond the rumble, white noise and stale smells there is the realization that there is extreme space outside the fuselage. I’ve done that one before though. I grew up flying in planes with my dad (pilot) and it took me until I was about twenty before the thought occurred to me that it was unnatural to be thousands of feet up in the sky rocketing along in a metal tube. I remember being up with dad one day and bending down to put my eye to this little vent in the cockpit glass. If I put my eye on the opening then there was no Plexiglas between me and the outside world. We were at about 8,000 feet and I can still remember the green of the trees below becoming the same kind of green I saw on the ground. Things were unfiltered and undistorted by that film of lexan. No minor reflections or refractions. I could feel real air. The distance, speed and situation shot into me a few seconds later and I knew what I had been doing all these years. It’s one thing to go flying and its another thing for the realization of what you are actually doing to strike right to your core.
Recently I had my sense of space awaken me to new vulnerabilities. Over the last nine weeks I’ve been spending a lot of time camping with my family. Each night we’d set the tent up. Each morning we would tear it down. Camping is not new to me and sleeping in a tent seems a natural thing to do. Previously I had thought that it was merely a cost effective, practical and portable way to seek shelter as you traveled to exotic and primeval places. Its a way to unobtrusively transport your reality into alien worlds. Its cheaper than a hotel. You feel the elements. You learn to hate certain elements. A little bit of rain is pleasant if you don’t have to tear down at daybreak. Nothing is worse than waking up after a temperature drop as the cold rain pastes the fly to the inner sanctum of the tent. You pull up the sleeping bag and pretend you never have to leave. You’re in for misery. With hands frozen into useless mud covered claws you tear it all down and try not to speak to anyone for fear of the irrational and bitter things you might spit out. Become an expert at stringing a tarp over base camp and watch the skies. This last trip has me looking at the skies many times daily. I don’t think I ever used to do that. I’ll look up all the time now and say, “that’s a nice one” or “isn’t that amazing”. I have even taken to taking pictures of the sky. No horizon. No other subject matter. How “new age”. As long as I don’t start wearing clothing with clouds printed on it I will be OK. I think I remember Doug Henning wearing one of these cloud suits for his Natural Law Party promotional campaigns. For those who don’t remember (or those not Canadian) he was a magician who ran for a government seat based on the idea that all constituents could be helped through the practice of “yogic flying”. From the outside it looks like people in the lotus position hopping up and down like amputee frogs. I really wished my laser witted scottish granddad were alive to give me his thoughts on that one. Oh what I would pay to be watching TV with him and have Doug Henning come on to sell his idea. My granddad was the guy who would call the hockey game with the sound off because he, “didn’t need those bloody idiots telling him what he was watching”. I can tell you his commentary was damn entertaining for a young lad. Far more colourful. He didn’t like the Habs. I, therefore, always wanted to be at his place for the Habs games. I liked the Canadiens and loved to get him going.
Back to the tent. It was just the other day in Glacier National Park Montana. We had a great spot and had reached the right kind of exhaustion after a twilight swim in Lake MacDonald. The bear warnings were kept in perspective. The fresh bear scat right beside our tent was kept a secret to allow the kids some R.E.M. sleep. At about 4:00am I somehow moved from drool trickling dreaming into the half sleep that is my most creative space. Its the place you go just before you hit deep sleep. Sounds become shapes and your creative mind takes logical notions to the next place. Its a place where things seem to make total sense but are probably stretching the boundaries of making sense. Elastic space. Sometimes I can force myself awake to write down what is happening. When read in the morning it can be brilliant or absolute shit. I moved into this space and began to put together the picture around me. I lay there in the silence and took inventory of my surroundings. I could feel and hear the family around me and placed myself in the world. In a second I was shooting out all over the globe. Nothing was in the way. The tent was close to transparent and that helped me be aware of every tiny sound, the temperature, the moisture. The air provided no resistance to my travel. All the miles I had logged over the previous months had combined within me to make me hyper aware of where I was at that instant. I could travel the roads out to each town I’d been in. I lay there and was very happy. It didn’t scare me. Then I felt vulnerable to the elements. Then I felt calm. Then I told myself to bookmark the feeling and the moment. Rare.
In that instant I could feel time and space connect and see it all at once. Like everything that just happens to me . . . I’ll try to repeat that instant as many times as I can and probably fail. I feel pretty good that this short revelation lead ultimately to contentment. It could have triggered a pretty decent freak out. Not a freaky as flying. This was the ground travel equivalent. I’m going to split the difference and start practicing my yogic flying. Heh...look at those clouds.
posted by Craig Northey at 1:38 AM

Home. More on that later. Hope to put up some stats tomorrow.
posted by Craig Northey at 12:05 AM