Give me a guarantee. Just the positive affirmation that there is life after death. If you can do that then I'll never ever get worked up about anything. Give me a guarantee. There will be no questions after that. I need no more answers. Are you a captain of that fashion industry? Would you like a donut?
posted by Craig Northey at 3:14 AM

Why was orange my favourite colour? Why did my allegiance lie in the red end of the spectrum? This was back when favourite colours were important. It was long before cliques and gangs and rock n’ roll subcultures as a way of life. You were not a mod or a rocker or a punk or a teddy boy. You liked red or blue. The green and yellow kids were marginally experimental. I chose orange. I truly liked it best. Fire was mostly orange. Oranges were orange. Rescue outfits were orange. Did I mention that fire was orange? When the popsicles came out I chose grape. What was I thinking. I had to get with the program. Grape is almost a colour. I was treading on thin ice. Later on you could choose between bands, sports teams, religions and haircuts. Being forced to choose a favourite colour was where it all started. Everyone made you choose. What kind of person were you? The choosing was hard. The sky was blue. What did I have against the sky or the sea? Nothing. Santa’s elves wore green costumes. Green was good but I was backed into a corner. Why oh why did I have to rule the elves out? I don’t have a favourite colour now. I haven’t for years. You can’t really live a sane existence if you lean on one too heavily. The only one reliable is gray. Some say it is not a colour but I learned from a good friend that gray can be someone’s favourite colour. “Favourite colour” doesn’t really mean “favourite colour. Its a term to describe the shades and hues that make you comfortable. Gray does that. I live in friggin Vancouver. If you can’t relate to gray on a constant basis in this place you better poke out your eyes and lay down beside the pharaoh's sarcophagus. Sacrifice them to live elsewhere. Sure I hate it being gray all the time but that helps maintain a writer’s frame of mind. How do those Mary Kay salespeople do it. Pink everywhere. Pink is a great colour but not everywhere. I can hardly wait until “Pink’s” CDs have absolutely no pink on them. She will have grown up. It will be an ironic moment. Irony is, at times, a mark of some sophistication. it would also prove that she could get sick of some aspect of her past. That’s growing up too. If she “came out” and admitted that her favourite colour was navy blue then she would be in her 30’s. If she then came out to say she couldn’t pick anymore she might be in her 40’s. The “artist formerly known as Pink” could be designated by a symbol or maybe a flavour, Perhaps she could be “Sweet” or “Salt” instead of “Pink”. The albums could be bleached of all colour and she could be distinguished by their texture. The “sandpaper” album. The “squishy” album. Maybe she could go by a smell? The reviews might read, “the artist formerly known as Pink has really brought out the funk this time with a rank assortment of cheesy beats and down and sulfurous gnarl”. If she wanted to stick with colours she might have to stick with “Blue” or “Violet”. “Red” is reserved for burly bodyguards and hockey players. “Brown” doesn’t ring right for her. “Yello(w)” is still too techno. “Orange” is too round a word and might make her feel boated. In her 50’s she could return to the “Pink” handle and actually do advertising for Mary Kay. “Pink for Mary Kay”. Medleys of her hits could open each convention as participants clapped on the 1 and the 3 and swayed into rapture. I picked orange.
posted by Craig Northey at 1:14 AM

Its almost 1:00am so I had to write something. Fatigue sent me here. The inner 8 year old boy says rage against the dying of the light. This day could be longer if you could just deny that you'll be a bag of shit all day tomorrow. If nothing comes of this writing I won't have anything to defend myself against my apparent lack of discipline. Nothing was achieved so therefore I wasted one chipper morning. This is a chance I will have to take. Turning cowardice to bravery. Plowshares to swords. Wine into words.
Wait. I can tell the moment has escaped me. The moment I was looking for is elusive. I feel now it might have been about 30 minutes ago. It disguised itself as time to eat a cracker and stare at a Good Housekeeping magazine without really reading. Then it left. That was the moment containing the solar flare. The hard part is admitting it has escaped. Training myself to recognize when it is coming has been a lifelong process. This is just pretending that it is coming back. This is just saying that 12:45pm is not quite 1:00 am which seems much much later. I wonder what the radio will play when the alarm goes off.
posted by Craig Northey at 12:44 AM

Cruise ships. Taking the whole town on the road. Splendid isolation? Safety in numbers when there’s no land in sight. I would bet the population of one of these behemoths rivals that of most small towns. My youngest and I were day tripping on the seabus to Vancouver and pulled up alongside a huge Nassau registered seagoing resort. It had two glass elevators, a climbing wall, hundreds of rooms with deck chairs and patios, swimming pools, ballrooms and on an on. I figured a cruiseship culture documentary would be damn interesting. Double feature it with that one about ballroom dancing. From the staff to the patrons, back room to ballroom it would be fascinating. I say this having never been on one. I bet people change when they are plucked from their day to day environments and dropped down into a well fed, open scheduled situation in a gold plated floating gerbil cage. Gaining weight and getting down. Aside from the regular innuendo (Cruisin’ Cruises, Booze Cruises, Singles Cruisin’ with Singles) it would be a good place to experiment. I mean...if you’re a scientist. Here you have a controlled environment populated by content humans. You could apply tinctures to the food and be certain everyone would be getting a sample. Wait one day for the reaction. You could test the speed of rumours -- they would boomerang back to you pretty fast I would bet. You could study common patterns of migration -- from shuffleboard to libation to berth to dinner to libation to dancing to berth. Communicable disease would be an easy study on board ship. So as not to darken your imagination I will start with the common cold. You could study the arc of temptation and its relation to age. Are the old people cheating too? Can you cheat and have the person you came with not notice? I would suspect the staff first. Most of the temptation would be linked to gluttony. They had all these triangles developing on the Love Boat but plausibility was not one of the strong suits of the show. Each episode ended these triangles with a quasi Christian resolution. This is important to reassure people that life always ends well. Disneyesque and dumb. Nobody leaps from the ship in desperation or exasperation. No husband and wife ever walk down separate gangplanks at the end of the voyage. Maybe this actually is what it is like on cruise ships. Since I haven’t been on one I can only guess. Maybe it is a Disneyland for the older set? Maybe people do experiment on the patrons just as Walt Disney did. Walt made sure he kept the folks in moral order. Is this the controlled environment you graduate to after the Matterhorn wears off? Club Med without the wieners and donuts? From controlled environment to controlled environment. An extension of the dream of the 50’s all the way into the sunset. From birth to Disney to berth to death. Palm Springs on the half shell. Please tell me its hipper than that. Are there cruises with different value systems that you can pick from in the departures lounge (see Cruisin’ Cruisin’)? Here’s to the idea of the gentle rocking, fresh sea air, and space to think about crazy things.
posted by Craig Northey at 2:59 PM

No creative writing today. I just thought I’d send out some information that will eventually make it to the other parts of the site. I can’t really directly get to those parts right now but I’m always able to get here.

GO TO THE FINGERS ODDS SITE. He's done some nice revamping. www.oddstp.com. Thanks Tim for all your work.

I’ll be playing three shows with Colin James in October:

One in Kitchener on the 3rd
One at Kee to Bala in the Muskokas on the 4th
One at the Argos game on the 5th

Sharkskin will be at the Fairview in Vancouver on October 10th
They will be in Comox BC & Courtenay BC on the 11th, 12th, & 13th
They will be at the Silvertone in Vancouver on the 18th

Watch for major TV appearances in Late October and early November

The resumption of the Northey Valenzuela collaboration is slated to begin recording on November 4th in Vancouver. Look for the Brisk Brothers to be the rhythm section and Simon Kendall to tickle the ivories.

My release date for the Giddy Up EP may be muddled up so stay tuned. It will get to you.
posted by Craig Northey at 8:58 PM

The grown man looks back on the day and tries to estimate whether he used his powers for good or evil. Its a system of checks and balances making their way down a lined piece of foolscap tucked inside a soiled and dog-eared brown duo tang. In the embossed label box, you see them in the middle of the top of any duo tang cover, is the title, “bad Vs good”. It is in the writing of a 9 year old boy. Its the type of writing that indicates immediately that he has just made the leap from printing. I believe it was written with one of those “training pens” with the springy tip and long tapered stem. In the left hand column on the opening page is the phrase, “lied about starting the brush fire” . On the other side of the vertical line, directly to the right of this statement are the words, “saved our house from burning by spotting the brush fire coming”. In this way the boy begins to struggle with the concept of creative accounting. Can you cook books that only you will ever read? Can you earn karmic points by saving someone from a dark fate that you have set in motion? What the boy learns from his nightly ritual with the secret duo tang is that this day to day is all about the dialectic of good and evil. Yes it is important to know the difference but which ones are small and which ones are huge. On any given day there is a tension between the two that pushes and pulls you around the town. Most of these are tiny struggles. If you’ve ever looked at the parking meter and then looked around to see if you’ll get nailed for parking in the spot for just five minutes...you know what I mean. You are a criminal taking advantage of an unjust system. That’s how you see it. You may see your transgression as being justified in light of the money grubbing inflexibility of monopolistic roadway barons. They have made thousands from you and you deserve this break. When you come back to the ticket you feel the push back into your court. When you call in to fight the ticket you feel empowered by your righteousness -- volley back. When they resolutely and quietly point out that under the clearly written guidelines you are out of order...its back across the page to the other side. My dad said, “its OK to speed if there is nobody around, you know the road, and you know what you are doing”. This justified him winding out that sucker to entertain both himself and the family. He was an expert competition driver so it was clear to us that this was sound thinking. You can see where this tennis game is headed. Today this type of thinking might easily lump you into the same category as those assholes in lurching black BMWs who are above signaling a lane change. Their car is their ticket to this elite club. These are small evils that seem internally justifiable as logical exceptions to the rule book. I do not wish to dwell on car & driver examples. This would put me in the category of people who waste inordinate amounts of time on radio call in shows yammering about the injustice of photo radar, speed limits, emissions controls, highway tolls and auto insurance costs. Just as I need to keep filling my car with gas I hope fossil fueled cars will be extinct in my lifetime. We will be as horrified by them as whale oil lamps and real ivory piano keys. The tough good vs evil dialectic is in this area. Jobs vs long range survival. Cost effective and efficient ways vs the right ways. Its not easy. The boy will need another duo tang. These are struggles that seem too big for the boy’s personal ledger. Perhaps the microcosmic reality is pure enough to translate to the bigger realm. If he wrestles himself from the arrogance that his single transgression is OK “just this one time” then he will have made a difference. he can never guarantee that this is true but at least it is all well documented.
posted by Craig Northey at 11:22 PM

I’m working on something bigger than what I can muster right now. That’s a good feeling and a bad feeling. It means that what I come up with at this minute will not meet a standard I have set for myself (this writing may become so self referential that the end of this sentence might just crawl up the ass of the one before it . . .I warn you). I always hope to surprise myself. Each of these blasts through the soft underbelly of my brain has me coming up with something gooey I didn’t know was there. These journal entries are like the burrs, scrapes and twigs that decorate a labrador retriever who emerges from the bush after crashing around with that especially aimless enthusiasm. I say lab because I have lived lab. All metaphors can be traced to the primary colours of my youth.
I’m an overly sensitive man who is reflecting on a number of mortality issues lately. This may be a big surprise for those of you who know me as a callous, brawny and shallow motorcycle stunt rider. I hate to shake your world to the ground but without my weaknesses I have nothing. The pentagonal corral of self loathing, fear, doubt, guilt and death has me resigned to its boundaries. I wish to graze on the greenery on the outside so I stick my neck through a hole in the fence every once in awhile. I’ve worked really hard to find the gate. The search resumes in fits and starts. My resignation to my fate has yielded many great musings -- songs. I was afraid of becoming the prisoner who wouldn’t want to leave the cell even when the door was left open so recent events have me crashing hard into the fence. I’m trying to keep a stupid grin on my face as I do it. If I can keep documenting the struggle then I might just understand when I’m actually making headway. I’ve centred on fear as one of the linchpins in the cage and I’m trying to steady my hands and pull it out. Cloaking my communication has always provided room for interpretation. This is fun for anyone playing along with the song lyric home game. Pop music used to be one place where obscure communication was welcome. Playing on my strengths you could say that this playing field was made for my boots. Playing on my weaknesses was playing on my strengths. I was protected. This style of verbal “montage” can lead to problems in other arenas. I try to be steely eyed and direct but regularly seek sanctuary in the blur of this journal to validate and exorcise my demon motor. I'm working on something bigger.
posted by Craig Northey at 11:37 PM

Draw your own hand drawing your hand. Talk about your tongue. Stare at your eye in the mirror. Smell the inside of your nose. Your mouth is full of spit. You must swallow it all day. Get your heart to think about each beat. Breathe in a casual and unimportant way. Listen to the microphone. Get out your Eno records.
posted by Craig Northey at 1:55 AM

Got some bad news from LA yesterday. I am motivated to write about it but don’t know how appropriate that would be. As another friend said, “its time to grab a cheap bottle of hooch and climb into the laundry hamper”.
Things are going by so fast but all fingers point to the clock and say things are going too slow. I don’t get it and I need time to take this all in. There should be pauses to gather your thoughts and take a good run at the hill . . .but there aren’t. No time to even fight back. So .. . . keep moving forward with the best intentions. I don’t even think its important to atone for anything. There will be fallout but most of what you do will be good.
posted by Craig Northey at 3:03 PM

You never want to do any harm.
There aren’t always options that will guarantee no harm is done.
At the moment you decide that it is now a good idea to do harm
something is wrong.

posted by Craig Northey at 1:05 PM

Something happens after dinner. All the pearls of wisdom and anecdotal information that starts the pistons of this process firing are erased. I guess I give them all back to the day. These fish are obviously not big enough to keep. I am obligated to set them free. My antennae must be adjusted if this is not the case. I learned of these phantom antennae from an Angelino friend who once stood beside me in the wings of a late night festival concert. A famous and hard driving band had created a churning mosh pit down in front. Behind the medieval action were about 30,000 more crazed revelers. We were up above the lip of the crater as the steam rose up in rolling knots from below. The cool night had come and brought out the columnar tracer beams of the stage lights and started to condense the sweat of the banging hoard. The place was heaving and rolling like a mofo and he turned to me and said he felt like no one had given him his antennae. He wanted so badly to tune into what the band was doing but didn’t “get it”. He pointed to the crowd and said that he felt they were all wearing their special antennae and he didn’t get any. I was enjoying the show but knew how he felt. A lot of my life is spent trying to tune the damn things in. I feel like that at a pro football game. I feel like that about a lot of days. When someone says I look tired or unhappy it is probably because I have spent the day looking for my bloody antennae and come up short. There is no explaining how low I will sag if I waste a day without the damn things. “I ran my ass off today but don’t have much to show for it” is a sure sign that reception was poor. Sometimes you can bail out and go for an ameoboid existence that doesn’t require electrical action on a higher plane. Denial is a starting point. It gives you time for your molecules to lay fallow. Just sit and allow your cells to divide. Sleep. Tomorrow brings the possibility of evolution. Perhaps you will make a sandwich instead of pouring cereal. Magazine instead of TV? Shield your eyes I’m opening the drapes. Outside there are better things to breathe. So many times my antennae have reattached while in the out of doors I am certain that stale air dulls reception. I must shut down, open the windows and . . . and wait.
posted by Craig Northey at 12:29 AM

The ants went marching two by two. The little one stopped to tie his shoe and they all went marching down into the ground to get out of the rain. It has come. Threatening first and blowing eddies of cold moisture around your bright lawn furniture and sun umbrellas. Looming hollow over your burnt brown lawn and newly washed car. Swelling. Leaking. Dropping down and making all you’ve left out look pathetic. All just symbols of failed optimism. If you leave them there just one more day then the inevitable may be driven back? No you quaint thinkers. Some say we need the changes of season to exercise our spectrum of moods. I could do without the gray taking up three quarters of my spectrum.
The heat may fade, bleach and crack the summer things but the rain comes to make them rot, mold and smell. One is a cleaner erosion. I choose entropy through heat rather than cold water. Steal my energy with pleasant heat. Make me soporific and lethargic the nice way. Don’t drag me to the ground by soaking my wind breaker to my body, using my tube socks as sponges and turning everything around me into one dark indistinct gray mass. All I want is perfectly bright spring and fall days forever. I am losing my immunity to the dank world and this will save me from donning a silver toupee and pastel cardigan and buying into a gated retirement community in California.
If one is there you want the other. I know I know I know. Who wants to be in Arizona in the summer. Pray for rain. The farmers love it. I know I know I know. Watch everyone’s face change when the rain comes. There is the initial “cozy” feeling if you happen to have pleasant shelter and nothing scheduled that requires outside activity. The “cozy” people can enjoy the first downpour. Their faces will change. Nobody stays in the “cozy” phase. It is transitory. It can last one or two days at its maximum. At that point you are ready to reach up and grab the throat of the sky and squeeze it ‘til it has paid for what it has done to you. I scare myself enough to start looking into some gingko or melatonin or eye of newt or whatever new seasonal depression remedy they have going out there. Is that smarter than moving to a different place? Is it less complicated? Got a headache? Take a pill. The modern way. Most recreational remedies I employ seem to be classified as “downers”. Soaking up the water with a wet towel. A bottle of merlot at the end of each dark gray day makes Jack a goth poet with a short life span. Conversely, the “uppers” (on the harder side of coffee) would shred my heart muscle, grind my teeth to tiny stumps, make me increasingly annoying, and drain my bank account in a matter of weeks. I’d make it one season counteracting the pall of the wild northwest coast with amphetamine treatments. I will run, skate and scream my way out the other end of this gauntlet once again. Endorphins are my only hope for survival. I will make myself strong enough to change the weather. Global warming. It was me.


Sorry about not riffing on the beautiful words that describe horrible things. The notion was more interesting than the full exercise.
posted by Craig Northey at 12:40 AM

Halva. A cool word. Something to eat. Some words fit what they describe. Some really blow it for the subject. The word that crossed my mind the other day was “Salmonella”. What a beautiful word. “Count Monty please meet my beautiful daughter Salmonella”. I will riff on this later. Sorry for the prosus interuptus. Long day.
posted by Craig Northey at 10:46 PM

Waiting. Its true. You never get back the time you spend waiting for things to happen. If you are constantly waiting for things then I guess its best that you find something really rewarding to do in all those holes. Meditation, reading, learning to juggle, I spy with my little eye or algebra. If someone is late and you are waiting for them then its tough not to be consumed by your own anger or worry. Are they going to make you blow some big opportunity by holding you up? Are they in some kind of trouble? Does the arrogance of their habitual tardiness overwhelm your sense of justice? The waiting time can be rendered even more useless when these notions clog up your head like hot custard. You read the same paragraph three times and take nothing in. You keep dropping the balls of gaffer’s tape you are juggling. Meditation or sleep is dominated by scenarios of the near future playing themselves out in one’s head - - a car accident or the delivery of a vitriolic speech that changes the latecomer forever. How can you then use the time wisely when you’re either worried or fuming? I’ve been told by habitual latecomers that this is my problem. If you have never in your daydreams attempted to add up all the time a habitual latecomer has stolen from you then you will not understand me. When you realize how quickly it adds up to a full month you get scared. They are relaxed and laissez faire. They refuse to be “stressed out” by any “uptight tripping”. I guess it is my problem. When I’m late I feel bad. I pray that the other person has had something valuable to do with their time. I’ve been guilty. I have also been guilty of being tardy returning calls and e-mails but I have always felt shame. A good friend in the Bay Area really got me thinking about how this all works. I see the importance of this etiquette. I once didn’t return some calls that got caught in the cracks between roadtrips and was almost written off as a callous flake by some really great people. Its hard to know when to fight for your space. There are a lot of people to make happy and sometimes it feels like you lose yourself in that concept. You fight back by letting things go slack and the resentment wave eventually reaches the front door of your little private thatched hut on the beach. Tide comes in. Now I’ve played each side of the waiting game. Fence sitter of the year award goes to . . .
posted by Craig Northey at 7:45 PM