A Long December by Counting Crows (Acoustic 2003 S.F.)
So I wrote a blog entry on Thursday and when I went to publish it there was an error message. I thought nothing of it as it has happened before and the post still published. I guess this time, something was wrong and it didn't post. I can't find it anywhere, so I guess that collection of words is lost forever. I am sure it is no great loss though.
Winter is here in Canada and it always arrives prior to the calendar saying it is so and it often stays beyond spring. Though here in Southern Ontario we are prone to strange changes of weather, no matter the seasons, right now it looks and feels like winter. The time of the year, where we do talk a little lower about the things we could show her.
Canada is being pulled apart by our regional differences and an inability of anyone in government to work together. Each party is to blame but most of my blame is aimed at our arrogant and self indulged Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Who has with the support of the Governor General been able to suspend our democracy and our parliament until the end of January. Technically he should have put his economic update to a confidence vote and been defeated, thus losing the confidence of the house. Instead he delayed a vote and was able to prorogue parliament, despite a coalition of the opposition with an agreement in place to govern. Not giving the opposition, no matter what composition it takes, the chance to govern goes completely against the Canadian Constitution. Below is an educational article about the process, which is irrelevant now because Michelle Jean made a huge mistake siding with a sure to be defeated Prime Minister.
http://www.raisethehammer.org/blog.asp?id=1170
"I stand transfixed before this street light watching the snow fall on this cold December night.........."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crfpN3n8lR0
Hasn't Hit Me Yet by Blue Rodeo
Above is one of my favourite "winter" songs by the very good Canadian band Blue Rodeo. I wrote the following piece of writing earlier this morning.
Frowns and Scars
A gathering of blackbirds scatter
Through swirling and blowing snow
December tears slide down her face
Momentarily warming exposed skin
Before freezing like this year’s images
A collection of memories still forming
While the mercury falls in a thermometer
Nuclear winter taking her heart hostage
The price of its ransom is too high for me
I am always disappearing amid my thoughts
Reappearing with a different frame of mind
Optimistic yesterday and pessimistic today
Carrying poetry and romance for tomorrow
Realism hiding it in the days of next week
A few hours closer to needing a new calendar
Each new month symbolically photographed
The picture to greet us each day of its passing
I am usually captured wearing frowns and scars
Love like stars are sprinkled across this country
Women’s hearts belong to the west or east of me
Places called Kelowna, Jasper, Moncton and Halifax
Where summer memories have been made yearly
All I seem to do each year is get a little older
Living among mistakes never intended to repeat
How easily they are made again and usually worse
The soldiers coffins are lining up on the tarmac
Three more Canadian flags covering broken bodies
Bringing this war’s total to an even one hundred
An emblematic number representing the whole
Individuals should not be forgotten in a group
Their deaths on foreign soil is a confusing sacrifice
Are they really fighting for us or for someone else
Questions hang in the air like dust from a bomb
There is an enemy but are they really ours to kill
Answers come in many colours like rust on metal
There is a country but can it really be like ours
Fortune has given us peace among the violence
Does this mean we must be killed for having peace
A flock of monks chant prayers on a morning walk
I wonder what any God would think of this world
Surely they would not have created such disillusion
Only random explosions of gases and liquids could
Billions of years in the future life will finally implode
Hopefully its result will mirror very little of Earth
Such a reflection like this belongs in nightmares.
12/06/08
"You'll sit alone forever, if you wait for the right time....."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsgtHf9Bewo
23 by Jimmy Eat World
I don't know if I can remember being 23, all the years seem the same now.
I finished reading Elle by Douglas Glover earlier this week and the following passage is from it.
"Founding a colony in the New World is like the act of love. You make camp in the heart of the other. Nothing is the way you expected it. You have to learn to talk another language. Translation fails. The languages get mixed up with each other. You're both disappointed. You ask yourself why you came there in the first place. You both feel invaded. You try harder and harder to make the other person do as you want, all the while feeling that this defeats the purpose. You would rather be alone. The thing you love seems altered, even dead. You are not the same as you were before you fell in love. When it's over, you leave part of yourself behind. If you survive, you are worse off than when you started."
In late October Counting Crows played 3 nights opening the Wellmont Theatre in New Jersey. Below are some very good clips from those nights.
"There's a girl on a car out in the parking lot......"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caRcWCTggTw&feature=related
Round Here
"Thought I might get a rocket ride when I was a child but it was a lie....."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxQA8zQN7Uk&feature=related
All My Friends
"I dreamt I saw you walking up a hillside in the snow casting shadows on the winter sky as you stood there counting crows..."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxQA8zQN7Uk&feature=related
A Murder Of One
"Wherever I have gone, the blues run the game...."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyZMhyL6EaE
Blues Run The Game
"Beneath the dust and love and sweat that hangs on everybody, there's a dead man trying to get out......."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNOJn8dikgY
Perfect Blue Buildings
"Get away from me, get away from me, this isn't going to be easily but I don't need you, believe me......."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BArBUziWs1I
Have You Seen Me Lately?
"So why'd you come home to this sleepless town......."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gSGQDenA8Q
Recovering The Satellites
"I'm running but I take my time......."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8sBEgQ6ycs
Friend of the Devil
"We are never quite as close as we are led to believe...."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2YNBveCrLo
When I Dream of Michelangelo
"Suck my blood, break my nerve......"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZdFiA_RnTs
Angels of the Silences
"I got to rush away she said......."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txcZN2IbHlA
Walkaways
A couple of the clips cut off before the end but everyone has to rush away. There is always somewhere else to be and someone else to be with, well for some of us anyway.
john.
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