I passed around the globe again! There was no guarantee. That passage saw us move provinces for the third and hopefully final time, and purchase a house in the mountains of the lower Laurentiens, near Quebec.
This move was a healing one from the perspective of our needs as a family. We finally have somewhere to call our own and it is a beautiful home. We are happy here.
I can’t recall being more professionally stymied than in the past year. I’ve been on the job market most of that time and have found very little. The market just seems to be … uninterested in what I can offer. I have so many skills built up over a lifetime of work, but maybe I’m yesterdays news.
Or maybe I’m just a creative and this happens to creatives sometimes. I’ve had no shortage of creativity in my life. Another albums worth of songs came my way in Fall and one of my kids poems has an offer for publication, but I would need to crowdfund a part of it and I just don’t want to. The hardest part of being a creative is that we are often at the mercy of gatekeepers and I’ve always struggled with self promotion to them. Maybe I can improve on that.
To quote the Buddhist master – We’ll see.
But to celebrate my 47th properly, here is one of my recent poems written in a tiny hamlet in southern Manitoba :
Everything sounds like Drake My favorite cousin up and died I thought “for goodness sake I have to travel 50,000 miles to see the wake” I got there and I listened for the bagpipes through the drape But instead I heard this boom boom boom That sounded just like Drake Oh it all sounds like Drake As flimsy as a crepe Ain’t no ballads anymore Everything sounds like Drake We went to a museum to try to learn a bit In the elevator Grace had a conniption fit She lay there writhing on the floor Her face white as a flake She whispered to me through her pain Everything sounds like Drake It all sounds like Drake How much more can I take Nobody goes to honky tonks Everything sounds like Drake My voodoo doctor visited my house the other day I didn’t want to pay him but my health is too risque He asked “what is the problem” as he hypnotized a snake I rolled my ears and held my eyes Everything sounds like Drake. It all sounds like Drake And that just takes the cake I’ve been worked to such a state and Everything sounds like Drake I died and went to heaven, stood there at the pearly gate, They put me in priority so I wouldn’t have to wait Would it be Mozart? Handel? Bach? Then, for goodness sake, The heav’nly chorus thundered in and sounded just like Drake It all sounds like Drake And I can’t catch a break Just shut up and stand up straight Everything sounds like Drake I lodged a formal protest, and to God I plead my case I really couldn’t stand how heav’n put me into such a state I lost the case by jury, now in Hades it’s my fate (To hear) Barry Manilow on repeat At least it isn’t Drake.
John Wiens, Conductor 